Evaluation:  
Conclusion: get a scanner
Review: I don't understand why ppl are spending $90 on this pen. Surely it does what it is supposed to do. But why don't you get yourself a $20(or even free after rebate) scanner which does a much better job in saving your notes electronically? Dane-Elec's software that translates your handwriting into text is a joke. If you have some extra money then this pen is a nice little toy to have. If not, i think a lower-end scanner is a much better choice.
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Updated Review: 5 stars
Review: Updated Review: (I tried to update from 4 to 5 stars but it won't let me)
I left a review a few months ago saying, among other things, that I had trouble changing the ink cartridge. Since then some people have emailed me asking if I figured it out, so I think its time to give an update. I did manage to change the ink cartridge-- it was stuck at first, but if you pull on the tip of the ink cartridge with tweezers it should come out. After I got it out the first time it was easier to do with fingernails, but you have to get a good grip on it.
I have been using the Zpen for the past several weeks to take notes in class, and it works very well. I see some people saying its finicky but I haven't noticed that very much. As long as I stay in the main area of the paper (not above the clip thing, for instance) it works great. I had a few times when I went too far out to the edge of the paper or to the side of the clip part, and it didn't sense my handwriting very accurately but I have learned to stay within the lined part of a piece of A4 paper (normal notebook paper for americans) and it works very well. I bought a bunch of ink cartridge and battery refills so that if one runs out during class I can replace it right away. I do have to remember to charge it every night because I am using it for 3-4 hours of notetaking each day. I'm not sure exactly how long it lasts, I'd say maybe somewhere between 4-6 hours of solid notetaking it runs out of batteries.
The pen is very useful to me, because I am a mathematics grad student, and it is essentially impossible to type equations quickly enough to take notes on a computer in a math class. Because of that, everyone still uses paper and pen (or tablet PCs, but those are very expensive). I use my Zpen to take notes in all of my math classes and have a digital copy later, and I really like it. It works surprisingly well-- when I bought it I was suspicious that the ultrasound and infared technology would actually work, but it does very well. Also, its nice that I do have a physical copy of my notes as well, so if anything goes wrong I can scan them later. I've heard of some people having their tablet PC crash during class and losing all their notes.
Another good thing about this pen vs other digital pens is that it is compatible with a Mac (the handwriting recognition software is not, but the part that gives you the images of what you wrote is). As of summer 2008 when I bought this one, the Zpen was the only digital pen I could find that would work with a Mac.
I don't have much to say about the handwriting recognition software, because I haven't been using it. I tested it once on a PC and it works fine on normal writing but it can't make anything of my math notes, and I wouldn't expect it to. The equations turn into gibberish. It would be awesome if someone invented software that could read my math notes and turn them into nicely typed up equations, but I'm not holding my breath.
I also really like that the peninkviewer software is on the clip thing so you can use it on any mac without preinstalling anything.
--Original Review:
This product works perfectly as advertised. I bought it for taking notes in my graduate math courses which are about to start, so so far I have only tested it a few times, but it seems to work great. I like how the software is on the device itself so you don't have to worry about which computer to use.
I do have one question though. I have not been able to figure out how to change the ink cartridge. The directions are useless-- they literally have a drawing of the end of the pen with fingers next to it. I'm afraid to force it becuase I don't want to break the pen or ruin the pressure sensitivity. If anyone has successfully changed the ink cartridge I would really appreciate it if you could send me some details at kindersurprises@Gmail.com. Thanks!
Evaluation:
Conclusion: great for a day
Review: Delighted with the pen for a second then everything refused to work. Hopefully it was just a faulty product going to try it again
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Doesn't Work
Review: Every once in a while it will clearly produce a few digitalized words. But 95 percent of what it produces are random lines and marks. It is a piece of junk. Wait for someone to perfect a similar product before you plunk down your hard-earned dollars.
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Sortta cool, but Finicky
Review: Practically speaking, this is a one or two star product. I gave them 3 stars because it is a product in a quite new market with a reasonable price. If you think it's a cool toy, buy it. If you need it to do serious work next week, don't buy it.
Here's the quick summary:
BOTTOM LINE:
The product is basically good, but the tendency of the receiver to drop information is a fatal flaw to practical use. The conditions under which information gets lost are detailed below.
PRO:
Good feature set. Good price point. Comes with lots of nice software stored conveniently on the receiver/flash drive. Writes on any paper. Uses common ink cartridges (and batteries, sort of - see below). MyScript notes software does surprisingly well at handwriting-to-text conversion.
CON:
Receiver is finicky; it can drop entire recording sessions, or parts of a page, even though the activity LED is flashing correctly. Top 20% of page is usually not recorded at all. Page turning is cumbersome. Careful placement of the receiver is important. Pen component is cheaply made. No off switch (so you need to remove batteries to save power). Resolution can be poor, especially near the bottom of a page. Limited number of output formats, and saved PDFs are not efficient (they are bigger than equivalent SVG files containing the pen lines).
In more detail:
I was pleased that the pen and software were easy to set up and use. I was also pleased that the pen viewer supports Linux and Mac, that MyScript Notes software was easy to register, and that MyScript works nicely, and sufficiently quickly, in VMWare Fusion Windows running on my first gen MacBook Pro. I was also pleased that the pen does what it says it does: it digitized my first few handwriting samples. Yay!
I was not pleased with the pen itself. I am sort of a pen snob, and usually write with a Namiki fountain pen. This pen feels like cheap plastic junk, and writes like the free ballpoints you get at conventions. To be fair, my Namiki and the zPen have about the same price, and the Namiki doesn't do any digital tricks (but oh man does it ever write nice!). One nice thing about the pen is that it takes common refills of the sort used by most multifunction pens, and some of these are pretty nice for ball points. Pilot PhD Multi refills and Fischer pressurized "universal" refills both fit, and write better than the included refill.
As a previous reviewer mentioned, there is no off switch on the pen, and so once you take out the little plastic isolator, it may drain your watch batteries in a hurry. This is annoying, but not fatal, since you can pull one of the batteries out and store it in the receiver cap to save power. Also, although I was not able to find the included GP393 batteries in my local store, I found that size 13 "zinc/air" hearing aid batteries fit, and work, just fine. I got an 8-pack of these at my local CVS pharmacy for $6. I live Bozeman MT (USA), which is certainly no shopping paradise, so when I can find what I need at the drug store across the street, I call that "easy to find". The receiver has an onboard rechargeable battery that charges via USB. Annoyingly, it will only charge when connected to a computer, so you can't use an AC->USB adapter (for example the Palm, Griffin, or Apple models) to charge it.
I tested the pen in a number of configurations. I quickly found out that there is a very large "dead zone" near the receiver. The manual says that within 1 inch of the receiver signal quality may be poor. I beg to differ. Within 4 inches of the receiver, signal quality may be entirely absent. I tried drawing a grid of lines on many types of paper, and almost every time the digitized result had a 3"-4" hemi-circle of missing lines centered on the receiver. I got my best results using an A5 notebook, and rather than clipping the receiver to the book, I just set it about 3 inches above the top of the page, at the same horizontal level (stacking it on top of my iPod touch worked well :). When writing this way, though, be careful not to move the notebook!
I did my best to have very careful handwriting, but I shouldn't have tried so hard. The resolution of the digitizer is not that great, and it gets worse farther from the receiver. By the bottom line of my notebook, my digital text looks like it was written by a guy with Parkinson's disease, even though the ink text looks fine. In the end I decided that, on an 8.5x11 college ruled pad (with the receiver set at the top of the pad), I could start writing 3.5" from the top, stop writing 2" from the bottom, and the intervening text digitized OK. Be careful that the receiver is oriented in exactly the same horizontal plane as your paper, or it won't work.
Well, except when it didn't record at all. I have had half a dozen experiences where I turn the receiver on, it flashes, then becomes steady as normal, I write, and the "pen down" LED turns on and off as normal, and then when I plug the receiver into the computer, there is a blank note file, and all my writing is lost.
Changing pages requires compressing the spring clip on the receiver. This seems to work OK, but you have to remember to do it, even though you can't have actually clipped the receiver to your paper if you expect the digitizer to work.
Be careful of your hand posture. If you grip too low, curl your hand around, or put your weak hand above the pen, it will block the digitizer.
Basically, all these constraints make the process of hand-writing a lot less pretty, and I feel like I should just type. There is, however, one redeeming merit: MyScript Notes. I hate Windows-only software on principal, and I don't tend to like non-open-source ware either. Despite this, I think MyScript is a fine program. It isn't perfect, especially if you have small writing, sloppy writing, writing with an unusual stroke sequence, or too little separation between words. However, if you write carefully, it can be 95% accurate in converting cursive script to digital text. That's a hard problem, and having usable accuracy at it is a major achievement. Kudos to MyScript.
Note that MyScript does care about the order of pen strokes. I can get a nice SVG file by tracing (e.g. with Illustrator or InkScape) a scan of a page, but this can't be recognized. For one thing, the SVG format MyScript understands is the Anoto format, and tracing with InkScape doesn't generate compliant SVG, but even if you convert it, without the correct stroke order, recognition doesn't work.
Anyway, I've now written a few dozen pages of fiction with the zPen, and put them in my computer. I can definitely go faster by writing normal ink with my Namiki and transcribing later with my keyboard, but it was a cool experience to see my writing turn into ascii automatically, hence the 3 stars.
I haven't tested an Anoto technology pen (eg the LiveScribe Pulse), but I bet they are much more reliable and accurate. If you really need the thing to work on demand, I'd try that solution, and just live with buying special paper. Alternately, go old school and use real live ink. If you do that, I suggest unlined Moleskin softcover notebooks and a Namiki Vanishing Point fountain pen running J Herbin ink. There's nothing in the digital wold that compares. Oh, and when you transcribe, use a dvorak layout keyboard :)
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