Digital pens touted as time-savers, but a few kinks remain

By Michelle Johnson, Globe Correspondent, 9/1/2003

Welcome back from vacation. Next thing you know you'll be back at work, trapped in a meeting that just won't end, trying to take notes and stay awake.

Unless you're one of those annoying wonks who clicks away on a laptop in conference rooms, it's time to raid the office supply closet for pens and notepads. Unfortunately, using them means having to retype meeting notes into your computer. Wouldn't it be nice to eliminate that extra step and go from pen directly into a computer?

That's the scenario that makers of digital pens have dangled before harried office workers. But early versions of these devices have had limited appeal because they generated a graphical image of a handwritten page rather than the thing many of us really care about -- text that can be edited.

Now, digital pens, paired up with conversion software that can transform handwriting into text, are finally worth a look. Well, worth a look if your goal is to cut down on retyping notes, data from forms, drawings, and other information that you need to share with colleagues or store on a computer.

Why bother with a newfangled pen rather than something like a slate-size Tablet PC? Portability and cost, for starters. Street prices for Logitech's io pen range from $150 to $195; Seiko's InkLink from $88 to $99. Not as cheap as your basic ballpoint and notepad, but far less than the $2,000-plus Tablet PCs that are being hawked as a must-have for mobile professionals.

Of course, a pricey Tablet PC and a digital pen are two entirely different animals. But if you're trying to make a decision about whether to go with a simpler solution or blowing the budget on a higher-end gadget, it's important to understand that they solve different problems.

"The pen products are solely for recording handwriting and sketches -- [digital] inking, but without integration into the OS [operating system]," said Frank Gillette, an analyst for Forrester Research. "The Tablet is all about bringing inking and a pen pointer to using a laptop -- integration with Windows for mousing and text entry in applications, not just note-taking, makes a big difference."

A recent survey commissioned by Logitech found that 92 percent of the respondents who take notes at work feel most comfortable using pen and paper. However, 70 percent said that the bulk of their important business files are stored on a PC. The survey of 1,000 Internet users, conducted by Greenfield Online, also found that half of the respondents spend 15 minutes a week hunting down misplaced notes.

Certainly that's all music to the ears of companies making digital pens and related "smart pad" products such as Seiko's SmartPad 2, which records handwriting into a PDA.

But there are caveats if you decide to go the digital pen route. If your handwriting, like mine, has been reduced to a barely recognizable scrawl due to overuse of keyboards, a digital pen won't save you.

A digital image of an indecipherable handwritten page is of no more use than its paper counterpart. And handwriting recognition software works best with clearly formed letters. It's the usual case of garbage in, garbage out. If you have to spend time correcting badly mangled text, what's the point?

All that said, I'm not ready to write off digital pens, so to speak. After test-driving the Logitech io and Seiko InkLink, I have to give a slight edge to the Logitech.

Enhancements added to an upgrade of the software that ships with the pen make it an even better deal. Version 2.0 of Logitech's io Software will be available as a download for current pen owners on Friday and will ship with pens on Sept. 10, according to Vanessa Torres, Logitech's product marketing manager for digital writing.

The Logitech pen is a fat gizmo that's been likened to writing with a cigar or a cucumber. It contains a tiny optical sensor located near the tip of the pen that records each stroke. It holds about 40 pages of handwritten notes and connects to a computer via a USB cradle. To transfer your writing to the computer you simply drop the pen into the cradle. The included software downloads your files.

Part of the bulkiness of the cigar-shaped pen is the built-in rechargeable battery, along with the other components that make it work. Unlike the Seiko InkLink, which tethers you to a clip on a notepad on one end, and a PDA, laptop, or desktop computer on the other, all you need to tote to a meeting is the Logitech pen and special digital paper to write on.

The paper's the rub, however. The pen requires digital paper that's imprinted with tiny dots that it uses to track where you're writing on the page. It's accurate, but pricey, at $24.99 for a 3-pack of notebooks. The paper also comes in Post-it Notes and includes Post-it software.

On a recent stroll through an office supply store I found three-packs of plain old lined notebooks for under $2. The Seiko product has the edge here because it uses plain paper.

The digital paper contains boxes where you can enter a keyword or a subject field, or mark an entry as an e-mail, appointment, or to-do list item that can be imported into an organizer such as Microsoft Outlook. Clicking the "done" box on a page allows the software to organize your notes by page number.

It's a little odd to write with a device that's so fat, and it certainly draws stares when you use it during a meeting, but I found that I got used to the size of the pen after a few days.

The new version of the software is a marked improvement over version 1.0, with more robust search features, the ability to merge multiple pages into one document, and, of course, handwriting recognition that turns your pages into text that can be cut, pasted, and edited in a word processor.

You'll have to pay for the handwriting recognition software, MyScript Notes, an add-on available for $39.95 (free 30-day trial download). You'll also pay extra for this feature with the Seiko InkLink, which uses a product called riteMail ($24.95) to convert text.

MyScript Notes worked well, but only on text that I carefully printed. The upside is that it's easy to enter corrections in a window that appears to the right of your original document.

The Logitech io requires a Pentium II computer running Windows 98 or higher, 64MB of RAM, and 300MB of free disk space. In addition to the software upgrade, new sizes of digital paper (5 x 8 and legal size) will be available soon.

The Seiko InkLink pen feels more natural to use out of the box because it's the size of a normal pen. However, using it with my PocketPC felt like a balancing act.

There's a clip that fits onto the top of the paper you're writing on. Then you attach a sensor to the PDA that communicates with the pen. The provided clip doesn't fit snugly onto the PDA, so it was easy for the sensor to slip out of place.

As you write, your text appears on the PDA's screen. It's mildly entertaining to watch, but the novelty wears off quickly. The included InkNote Manager software is basic but worked as advertised. Files downloaded when I synched my PDA. In addition to using regular paper, the Seiko also uses regular ink cartridges, unlike the Logitech.

Also on the plus side, the InkLink's various pieces fit nicely into an included carrying case, so it's not much of a burden carrying it around. The InkLink requires a computer running Windows 95 or higher, 32MB RAM, and a CD-ROM drive. In addition to desktop computers it can be used with a variety of Palm and PocketPC handhelds.

Paired up with riteMail for handwriting recognition, the InkLink is a fine, and cheaper, option than the Logitech pen. Again, I'd give the Logitech a slight edge because of the new features available in the upcoming software upgrade.