State of the Art

Digital Pens to Write on Any Paper

...For starters, the ZPen’s receiver has a spring-loaded, clipboard-style clip that snaps easily and firmly onto just about anything: legal pad, notebook, bar coaster, whatever. The Digital Scribe’s receiver has three clips, one intended for each possible place on the page where you might fasten it (top left, middle, top right). Unfortunately, each is the size of a confetti flake, capable of opening wide enough to take only a feeble bite of a page. Fussy is the operative word here.

The ZPen has another advantage. It doubles as a 1-gigabyte flash drive, so you can use it for carrying or transferring any kind of file between computers.

Better yet, the notes-viewing software is right there on that flash drive. That means you can view your notes on anybody’s computer instantly without having to install anything first. With the Scribe pen, you must install special software from a CD before you can use it.

If you want to do more than view the notes — that is, if you want to export them as converted text — you do have to install the MyNotes software on a PC, no matter which pen you buy. But the ZPen’s version wins here as well. First, the installer is right there on the flash drive, so you don’t have to carry around a CD. Second, you get the full version of MyNotes, capable of recognizing multiple languages and mixed text and graphics on a page. The Digital Scribe pen, on the other hand, comes with the more limited Lite version.

Nor is the self-contained software the ZPen’s only travel-friendly feature. Turns out there’s a U.S.B. jack hidden under its rounded end cap; you can plug the whole receiver directly into your computer so you don’t have to pack and track a separate U.S.B. cable, as you do with the Scribe.

But wait, there’s more: all that flash memory means that the ZPen can store about 1,000 pages of handwriting. The Scribe holds a paltry 50.

Finally, you can get into real trouble with the Scribe when you need to turn a page. If you forget to press the Page button on the receiver, you wind up invisibly overwriting the previous page, turning the whole thing into a superimposed, unreadable mess. The ZPen more or less takes care of that problem, because simply squeezing to open the clip as you remove or turn the page automatically tells the receiver that you’re starting a fresh sheet. 

Read more:here:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/technology/personaltech/03pogue.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1