Review: Finally a useful digital pen

A LiveScribe Pulse digital pen is demonstrated on Thursday, June 5, 2008 in New York. The pen, once mightier than the sword, has been getting trounced by the keyboard in the computer era. But a test of four "digital" pens finds one that complements the keyboard in a meaningful way. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

(AP) -- The pen, once mightier than the sword, has been getting trounced by the keyboard in the computer era. Now and then there's a push toward "pen-based computing" that doesn't get very far.

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4/5 after 28 votes

• Bob_Kerns - Jun 07, 2008
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  Nice article. I agree, the Pulse is the only digital pen I thought really brought much new to the table. (Although being able to record the time sequence of drawing has a few applications).
  
  Livescribe has just released a patch for the problem you encountered with your work computer. People are successfully using it on the Macintosh with Parallels or Fusion, but that's not for the average user, but a Mac version is coming. Conversion to text is supposed to be coming from a third party.
  
  But one point I think you missed out on -- the Pulse really shines as an audio recorder, even if you ignore that it is conveniently also a pen! My wife has been searching for a high-quality audio recorder for a decade, and finally feels she's found what she needs. It's worth the price for that alone.
  
  They really have done a great job with the sound quality, especially if you use it with the included headset. The 3D audio really helps distinguish the sound source you're trying to listen to versus the various other distracting sounds in the room.
  
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• JasonLS - Jun 08, 2008
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  In regards to the comment on not being able to turn notes into an email, although the ink-to-digital text application is not available yet, a user can select the notes on a page within Livescribe Desktop, copy the page and paste it into a Word document or email. Note this only captures the notes on the page, not the audio as well.
  
  Also, as noted above, Livescribe announced last week a way to correct the problem associated with the MyDocuments folder being hosted on a network drive. Go to http://www.livesc...hp?t=424 for more information on the solution of this issue.
  
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