Livescribe 4 GB Echo Smartpen

Perfecting the near perfect, July 20, 2010

By 

G. Ware Cornell Jr. “anotherlawyer” (Weston FL) –

  

  

  

I am a fantastic believer in Livescribe’s smartpens. The first donation three years ago Livescribe 2 GB Pulse Smartpen has worked perfectly ever since. It is not exactly svelte, but it had the room to record 200 hours of audio and has proved to be an extremely reliable and useful tool for a busy litigation do.

The Echo is a refinement of the first Pulse. It is slimmer, and doesn’t quite look like one of those metal cigar containers. It has twice the memory of my first smartpen. The price has come down over the years significantly making an investment in a smartpen even more attractive.

I use my pen to record initial client interviews as well as depositions. I am able using the Livescribe Desktop software to export a recording to a CD and send it to a client to hear. But the best feature is its “point and play” technology which allows me to take note selectively to a recording on my pen by touching a word in my notes. The audio immediately syncs to the part of the conversation and has a five second “skip back/skip forward” feature to account for slow writers like me. I can also take note later to my notes and add additional points of interest.

Audio fidelity is amazingly excellent. The pen has settings for uncommon environments like lectures or office meetings. Even if you just use the default settings you will be pleased with the output.

Besides being thinner, the new Echo no longer requires a cradle, and attaches directly to a USB port on your Mac (that’s me) or PC.This eliminates one more gadget I need to lug around in my briefcase.

Livescribe’s special paper should not intimidate any prospective consumer. First it is possible to print your own paper. Livescribe suggests that this requires a laser printer, but I have really done it with an injet. You have to test in any event whether your printer is compatible which is how I learned some inkjet printers will work.

But users will find Livescribe notebooks to be very practically priced. I buy Livescribe ANA-00018 Single Lined 100 Page 5-8 Notebook – 4 Pack which makes the cost per notebook very comparable to ordinary spiral notebooks. Visibly Livescribe is refusing to adopt the model of printer manufacturers who make most of their cash on supplies.

There are applications available for the Echo including a text recognition app that offers a 30 day free trial. But my handwriting is usually indecipherable even to me so I have by no means tried it. But the thought is fantastic.

In the universe of Livescribe pens this is probably the one which should command your most serious consideration. 4GB is an an giant amount of data and recording. I have by no means come close to filling 2GBs even if I do remove recording from the pen from time to time while maintaining the audio on my Livescribe Desktop.

Livescribe has perfected a product that, as a tool for lawyers, for students, for physicians, and salesmen, as well a host of others was near perfect.

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Works Well on Windows; Mac Software Sluggish & Handwriting Recognition Add On MyScript Does Not Work Well, August 25, 2010

By 

SanjeevP “Bottom Line” (Michigan, USA) –

  

  

Incredible! is the first result to this device. Here are the things it can do, and commonly well.

1. Enter like a regular pen.
2. Record voice or sound like any digital recorder.
3. Link the written notes to the recorded sound. So if tap on a written word it will play the sound recorded at the time that word was written.
4. Upload handwritten notes and voice to notebook.
5. Share your written notes and audio (Pencasts).

The sound quality is honestly excellent. There are lot of add on apps available like games, language version, piano etc. which I have not used so far except MyScript, which does not work very well. It comes with two fine black ink cartridges, no medium, and I wish there was one included. The writing was faint with fine tip and it was scratchy to enter. So I had to peacefulness an extra pack of five Livescribe ARA-000007 4 Medium Blue and 1 Fine Red Ink Cartridge cartridges. Sometimes the writing is faint on the notebook even with medium tipped blue cartridges.

PROBLEMS

1. BUGGY MAC LIVESCRIBE DESKTOP SOFTWARE: Echo pen does not come with any software, you have to download that from the web site. LiveScribe Desktop for Mac software is very sluggish and glitchy. You will be watching the spinning wheel for a while (3:48 minutes) when it starts, it will keep on asking you for email take up and password and not let you use the program until you do. And if you are not connected to the Internet, the LiveScribe won’t stop spinning until you connect the Echo pen. Windows software is really better, quicker and does not hang up like that. With you connect the pen, it takes a while for the notes to show up. Even if you can archive the notes from one pen to one notebook, there is no way to transfer notes to multiple computers because archiving the notes removes them from the pen. The first time I connected the pen, it updated the firmware automatically.

2. DIFFICULT TO PRINT CUSTOM PAPER: Another problem is that you have to buy notebooks and paper from LiveScribe. As far as I can make out, they do not sell A4 size paper. You can print the paper on some Postscript affect laser printers. I could not print the paper on Dell 5100cn affect laser printer, either with Dell Postscript driver or with Adobe generic Postscript driver but I was successful in printing the paper on Brother MFC-9840CDW Affect Laser Multifunction Center with Wireless Boundary and Duplex – but only from the Mac LiveScribe. It took a long time – 2 hours – to print 25 pages! Fascinatingly, the custom notebooks could be printed only in Mac Livescribe, not from the Windows version. The file was 200MB. You have to print one full notebook of 25 pages at time and you cannot print partial notebooks, say pages 1-10. And you can only print total 100 pages (4 Notebooks with 25 pages each). So if you want to use more than hundred pages, you have to archive a notebook before you can do that. That limits committed pages to 100 at a time! This is the largest drawback I found for my purpose because I need to have hundreds of committed minutes at a time where I can enter information on multiple days. The same limitation also applies to their notebooks. Even with using 1200 dpi resolution for printing, the quality of writing was still poor when it showed up on the notebook. So I finished up using Livescribe Single Subject Spiral Notebook ANA-00017, 4-Pack, Nos. 1-4 which have A4 size paper, but punched.

3. NO EASY WAY TO BACKUP: The data transferred to the notebook is saved in one of those obscure and hidden Windows & Mac folders that are hard to find for non techies and will not back up unless you do global backup like Windows Backup or Mac Time Apparatus. You cannot save your data in custom folders. Even though, I had all backed up, I could not restore the the data when my hard drive died and lost all archived notes. Three technical help reps from LiveScribe could not restore it. First two said they will call back and let me know but by no means did. The last technical help rep did get back to me in Email and said they could not restore my backed up data. With losing lot of data (300 A4 pages), I now save all notes as PDF files in my custom data folders and also upload to Evernote. I do not record lot of audio and so far the free Evernote account has been sufficient. Integration of Windows LiveScribe with Evernote works well.

4. POOR HANDWRITING RECOGNITION ADD ON MyScript: My main purpose in buying this pen was to convert handwritten notes to notebook text. For that I had to buy a thirty buck add on called MyScript for LiveScribe which does not work so well. Even with clear cursive writing it does not recognize many words and has…

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Nice Upgrade from the Pulse, July 22, 2010

I like my Pulse 4GB. This Echo 8GB is just that much nicer – more comfortable to hold, more memory, better uplink connection than the Pulse’s standard cradle, which is a small too simple to knock the pen off from. The Pulse’s pro cradle (upright) is very nice, though. The new Mac Desktop update (2.2.1) is a very excellent one, with a much simpler boundary for sharing pencasts, pdfs, and AAC files. Like the before reviewer, I had difficulty at first, but finished up manually downloading and installing the latest software update (my software kept telling me I had the latest, but it was 2.1). It replaced my before version(keeping all the Pulse files intact), and with the quick install, it started to recognize the Echo without any problem.

The new pen cap is small and fits tight – I suspect it will be lost promptly. It is uncommon than the Pulse caps – smaller, and fits on differently. I don’t notice much difference at all in using the Echo vs the Pulse, but I do find it more comfortable and less dorky-looking. I by no means considered 4GB to be too small storage, but 8GB certainly allows me to record all at the highest quality without concern. Fascinatingly, this pen didn’t come with the recording receiver – which are nice, but way too dorky to really use. If you are looking to buy a first Smartpen, you really can’t go incorrect with either the Pulse or the Echo. If you are a student or an attorney or anyone who wants to recall detailed discussion points, you won’t be sorry. The variety of notebooks now is fantastic.

Note: EVERY high school and college student with learning disorders involving processing speeds, slow writing, Asperger’s Syndrome, or attentional issues should have and use this product. I suspect this will replace “note takers” eventually, as this is FAR less expensive and more effective (see 2008-09 research study from Rochester Institute of Technology).

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