Livescribe 8 GB Echo Smartpen Pro Pack (APX-00007)

I got the LiveScribe 8GB with the Pro Pack and I had some skepticism, given some of the reviews here. After testing the product for a few hours I am in love! I am able to take digital notes with or without audio recordings, the stylus ink works fine (still, I bought replacements from a swiss pen company, just in case the reviews are correct after some use), and the MyScribe managed to recognize 90% of my terrible handwriting (the other 10% I sometimes struggle to recognize as well). I am about to go to Grad school and this pen will allow me to preserve every single note in searchable format digitally (in my industry that means a lot). As a side benefit, the pen has a number of cool apps I can use to convert my notebook it into a tablet for my computer, create digital tables, calculate units, etc. Thank you, LiveScribe! (I will keep posting updates if anything changes)

Think of this as note recorder + scanner + biro in a fountain pen look-a-like shell with a hand writing recognition software included to boot. When you add up all these features for the price being offered on Amazon, it's quite reasonable. I found the recording sensitivity excellent especially with the 3-D recording headset provided in the Pro-Pack. Great for recording in a lecture theatre. I can't recommend this enough for the university student. I always found it difficult getting down all the notes in time in my university lectures. It comes in handy when you can point to a particular place in your notes and the recorded notes takes you to that exact point in the playback. You never have to be afraid of missing out on an important point from a lecture or speech.

When you plug in the smartpen to your Mac, each page is an exact scan or "pencast" of your written notes. By using the included MyScript software, you can also convert your handwritten notes to digital text. Admittedly the handwriting recognition software isn't perfect but it's 80% of the way there depending on how neatly or how legibly you write. It's better than having to retype out your handwritten notes from scratch. You just have to review the digital text and amend the words that weren't recognised correctly. If you're a student, all this cuts down your notetaking and prep time by half, leaves you with more actual study time. You can use these pencasts to more easily edit your notes to form your final review notes for your exams.

The pen might look a bit clunky and unwieldly but surprisingly is much easier to write with in the Echo version. This is due to the better grip on the Echo as compared to the Pulse. The biggest design flaw I think is the "smartpen cap" that is used to cover the pen nib and ocr hardware at the pen tip. Once this cap is taken off, there's nowhere for it to be placed on the pen so could easily be lost. In normal pens, a pen cap or lid can usually be placed on top of the pen for the duration that the pen is being used to write with and then taken off to replace the cap back on the tip. But this is not possible with the smartpen as this is where the mini-USB connector and phone jack is located. So I guess just be careful not to lose the pen cap when you've taken it off the pen.

The software that comes with Livescribe is relatively easy to use and quite apparent even without reading the user manual / guide. The smartpen also comes with some apps that can be loaded up on the pen. The apps are really basic but you at least get about 10mins worth of fun out of them. My favourite are the language apps. For when you're bored just repeat some travel phrases, comes in handy when you're ready to travel abroad. Overall, I found the pen and software easy to use, pretty straight forward. If you're a student, the smartpen will be pretty handy especially for those that want to capture every single word in a lecture or tutorial. If you're in a profession that requires notes to be recorded as exactly as possible, the smartpen will deliver on that requirement.

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I bought a Livescribe Echo 8 GB on special and was very excited about using this technology to post solutions to problems for my chemistry class. First, it would not synch. We finally traced this to the fact that the USB cannot be plugged into a hub, which is something they don't tell you.

The next problem is that the pencast pdfs created from the pen are very quirky. Specifically, the ink that is supposed to be light gray (and darkens as you write) is already dark in random spots when you start the pdf and it doesn't change as you write over it. This makes the presentation very confusing.

Another problem is that they claim you can re-order pages in a pencast using "Custom Notebooks" feature of their desktop, and when you export them to a pdf the pages should remain re-ordered. This is essential if you mess up, say, page 1 of a two-page pencast, and then want to re-record only that page. It becomes page 3, but can be re-ordered in front of page 2 in a "Custom Notebook." However, in the pdf, the pages are NOT reordered.

I had four e-mail exchanges with their support and sent them all sorts of files as requested. I probably spent 6-8 hours helping them to troubleshoot this problem. In the end, they are not responding, probably because they can't fix the problems. Worse yet, I bought extra notebooks, pen tips, a case, and an extra USB cable.

I strongly suggest avoiding this product until they have fixes for these and other bugs. It is a slick idea with a very amateurish execution.

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I did quite a bit of research before buying this pen. I read reviews on the Livescribe site, Amazon, and others. I was concerned about what people were saying about the ink in particularly. I decided to buy the pen anyway as an Xmas gift to myself.

So far, I have not been disappointed. The ink that came with the pen flows nicely which was surprising since I expected something worse (because of the reviews). I can see that the cartridges are smaller than a typical pen cartridge, and that is probably not by accident :-) Livescribe could still make good money from a regular sized cartridge. They seem pricey as well. Their bean counters should check their math and read up on economies of scale: They'd sell more cartridges if they were priced better. Right now it seems like a lot of folks are looking for alternatives and have come up with some creative solutions, just to save a few dollars. Livescribe pay attention to your extremely loyal base--someone will come along soon enough and see a new marketing opportunity for either 3rd party cartridges or a new brand of smart pens.

As for the pen itself--remarkable. I like the small portfolio with A5 notebooks. Small footprint when I am taking notes at work, meetings, etc. Audio recording is very good, even without the binaural headphones. I love using the calculator, too. Livescribe connect is a snap to use. I frequently email my notes to others. I do wish eventually a wifi transfer method were added, but that could lead to a larger pen and the echo is large enough!

Myscript works great, too. Flawless handwriting recognition. I've let it transcribe a few dozen pages into MS Word and so far not a single problem.

I use OneNote as well, and when I import the notes into my table PC's copy of OneNote, it also does handwriting recognition flawlessly but that is also because my tablet has been trained on my handwriting for well over a year.

I bought the text to table app and it works fine.

Learning curve wasn't steep. If you set an hour aside when you get the pen you can update the firmware, watch the exercise videos, and learn the app functions. It's not that hard at all.

Things I'd like to see in the next version of a Livescribe pen:

1. bigger ink cartridges, for the same price or cheaper as the current ones.

2. Ability to track or even deactivate a pen if it gets stolen or lost. These are both easy in today's technology.

3. Wireless transmission of notes. This is the pen's greatest weakness.

4. A narrower design, if possible. I'd pay more for the pen to have that feature alone.

I would have given it five stars, but the size of the ink and the price of it forced me to knock off one star. Overall I am very pleased with my purchase.

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The pen itself works fine, the audio is what you would expect, you can hear the speaker but there is background noise that you can't really get rid of without running audio filters. The actual digitization of your handwriting works quite well and syncs nicely. The problem is and this seems to be a wide spread problem if you look at their support page is that pens will not transfer the audio to your computer so you can't archive notebooks and their associated audio. I am not sure about other but that was why I bought the product so this is kinda a deal breaker for me... Also their support is quite lacking, I have spent 2 weeks waiting to hear anything what so ever from their customer service department...