Gadget Review: Axioo Digital Pen & USB Flash

Convert your scribbles digitally


Gadget Review: Axioo Digital Pen & USB Flash

by Sim Cheng Kai

10:05 AM Dec 26, 2010

If you are the sort who jots down notes on a paper clipboard and later archives the information digitally (by scanning the notes or by manually typing them into the computer), then the Axioo Digital Pen & USB Flash could save you a lot of time. It automatically creates digital copies of your handwritten notes as you write them on paper, and the 1GB of storage lets you keep about 1,000 pages without having to transfer the files to a PC.

At $149 (price includes handwriting-to-text transcription software), it's also one of the more affordable digital pens around. And unlike the Livescribe Pulse and Echo pens, the Axioo does not require special dotted paper to work.

But what you pay for is what you get. Compared to the Livescribe pens' built-in OLED displays, microphones (for audio recording), and infrared cameras, this Axioo product feels somewhat low-tech.

All you'll get here are a ballpoint pen with an ultrasonic emitter embedded in the pen's tip, and a receiver unit that you clip to the top edge of a piece of paper. When the pen tip is pushed firmly onto the paper, ultrasonic waves are picked up by two microphones on the receiver, which lets it extrapolate the pen tip's location.

Sadly, this means that you have to establish a clear line of sight between the pen tip and the two microphones. In my first set of tests, my handwriting appeared distorted in the digital copy compared to what was on paper. Some letters turned up crooked, slanted, or slightly displaced - because I had accidentally obstructed the line of sight simply by resting my wrist and the base of my hand on the paper while writing. Certain sets of text also looked italicised, due to the way I held the pen - at a 45-degree angle.

So in my next set, I made sure my writing hand did not rest on the paper, and that the pen stood almost perpendicular to the writing surface. Sure enough, the imperfections were gone. Some strokes were still slightly shorter in the digital copy than on paper, due the the pen's "lift", but that's nitpicking at this point.

As such, I've found the Axioo pen to be most comfortable when writing on a clipboard you hold vertically in front of you - during which my writing hand naturally did not rest on the writing surface. On a desk, however, this felt a little unnatural.

Otherwise, if you can live without perfect one-to-one digital copies, the slightly distorted text will not pose a problem when using the Intelligent Character Recognition (IRC) feature to convert your writings to text with the bundled MyScribe Notes software - after you spend the 20 minutes required to "train" the software to recognise your handwriting quirks.

There will still be occasional typos, but it'll still be a lot faster than typing the entire text. If you intend to transcribe, do use lined writing paper, and make sure you space out words neatly. This ensures the text is neatly aligned for better transcription results.

Unlike a scanner, the lines and margins from the lined paper will not appear in the digital copy. Theoretically, this would make the Axioo pen ideal for tracing diagrams and drawings. However, the slightly distorted text and the lack of pressure sensitivity make the Axioo pen hard to recommend for any kind of drawing tasks.

Also disappointing is that you cannot hook the receiver up to a computer and write on-screen in real-time - something that other similar digital pens (like the Iogear Mobile Digital Scribe) allow you to do. Instead, to do real-time writing, you will need a separate Axioo Intellipen product, either the Wired Digital Pen & Mouse ($89, tethered pen and receiver) or the Digital Pen & Mouse ($119, untethered pen, tethered receiver) - both of which cannot be used without being connected to a PC.

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Source: www.todayonline.com