Many of us are used to typing away on computer keyboards, but there are still times when it’s better to take notes by hand.
Here at Computeractive we’ve all got old notepads full of scribbled notes, as do many students, teachers and others. So we were intrigued by Apcom’s Digiscribble, which is described as a mobile digital notetaker.
Digiscribble works like an ordinary pen, allowing the user to write notes by hand just as they would normally. It also includes a tiny transmitter that allows it to communicate with its base unit, a small sensor that clips onto your notepad (though the annoyingly small clips mean it’ll have to be a pretty thin pad).
The pen records the movements of your hand as you write and then transmits that information to the base unit. This stores the information in its memory until you plug it into a USB port on your PC, and it then transfers the information to the computer.
It’s a nice idea, but the Digiscribble’s effectiveness very much depends on which version of Windows the computer is running. If it is running Windows 2000 or Windows XP, the Digiscribble merely records an image of what you’ve written on the page, rather than recording it as text that can be edited. This means there’s no easy way of organising or editing the actual text of the notes – it merely provides a picture of each page.
The Digiscribble does include a trial version of an optical character recognition program called Myscript, which can attempt to turn that handwriting into an editable text file. Sadly this only works for 30 days: it’s then necessary to pay another $50 (£25) to get the full version.
That said, Vista Home Premium users (or anyone using a business edition of Vista) can use Vista’s built-in tablet PC software to actually record the handwriting as text and enter it straight into programs such as the Windows Journal (also included in Vista). In this mode, the Digiscribble works quite well.
The Digiscribble worked well with Vista once installed, but we had to struggle to get the device set up properly in the first place. The Quick Start guide provided with it is entirely inadequate and the electronic manual on the CD wasn’t much better: it took an hour or so of trial and error before we were able to start using the Digiscribble properly.
The Digiscribble could certainly be useful for many people – especially those who have Vista on their PCs – but Apcom really needs to make it a lot more user friendly before it can be recommended to anyone who isn’t already familiar with tablet PC technology.
Vista compatible: Yes
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