TechTreak

If you’ve been hearing the words Livescribe Smartpen mentioned in awe and are wondering what it’s all about, hold your breath and prepare to be blown away. Livescribe is aptly named as is the product it’s selling – the Smartpen. By now you’ve probably figured out that it’s a pen of some sort. Read on to find out about the features and capabilities of this ‘magical’ pen.

Remember all those times you struggled to take notes in class and keep up with the lecturer? Now you probably find yourself experiencing the same problem when you go for work related meetings. Well, Livescribe Smartpens have been made especially for people like you. It not only works as a regular pen allowing you to pen notes but it simultaneously records the ‘lecture’ or ‘talk.’ That in itself should give you enough reference material but the Smartpen doesn’t stop there. It makes digital copies of all the notes you’ve taken and links them to the specific parts of the lecture that they relate to. You can hear anything that’s related to a particular part just by tapping on that part of the page with the pen.

When you upload all that information to your PC, the software that comes with it archives the information and makes it completely searchable. This is the primary function of this revolutionary pen though it does come with additional features such as a translator, a calculator and a virtual piano that plays when you draw a piano and then press the various ‘keys’ with the pen. Each pen comes with 2GB memory that can’t be increased but is good for about 200hrs of recording.

How does it do all this? Well, the Livescribe Smartpen comes with a pack containing a digital notepad with about a 100 pages. The package also contains a pen case, cradle for charging the pen, a stylus, 3 additional ink nibs and a headset (meant for picking up audio and recording it).

The digital notepad is key to the manner in which this smart piece of equipment is able to connect all the relevant audio data to the written data. The Digital notepad is made up of several lines of dots. The pen’s nib interprets the shapes of these dots to identify ‘location’ with the help of the infra-red feature that’s built into the nib.

Looks wise, the pen and the base appear to me made to last while still looking good. This is definitely a good product that lives up to its claims and comes in really handy for people who still make use of pens to take notes.