Apcom E-pens Mobile Notes

More than a pen device, this is a complete input system

Apcom E-pens Mobile Notes
Price: £59

Mobile Notes is a complete system for handwriting input and pointing in general. It can be used away from your PC and doesn't need to be connected to anything to capture handwriting. It can also be used as a Tablet PC pen or a mouse while connected to a machine.

The unit consists of a small black box - the memory unit, with an LCD display and a single button, which acts as the tracking device, together with a special pen. The tracking device clips to the top of a pad or clipboard.

Three small clips are provided at each corner and one small problem is that these don't open very wide making it difficult to clip to anything thick. In most cases this isn't too much of a problem in that you can use a few pages of a pad or find a thinner clipboard. The plus side is that you can use it on a single sheet of paper resting on a desk. The pen comes with six ink refills and one stylus which can be used without leaving a mark on the paper.

The pen isn't bad but if you are fussy about such things it isn't an object to carry with pride. You can get refills from an online store and you should be able to find them in a high street store as they are standard items.

Setup

Setting up is fairly easy. You have to put two small mercury batteries into the pen and insert one of the ball pen cartridges into the end of the pen. A removal tool is provided and you can opt for a stylus in place of the ball pen if you don't want to leave a mark on the paper or if you want to use the pen on the screen of a tablet PC, say.

The memory unit connects to your PC via a standard mini USB cable and recharges, usually in 2 or 3 hours, while connected. Once charged you can start using it. You clip the device to the top or to one side of the draw area, press the button and you are ready to record everything that happens on the paper. As you draw or write the pen movements are automatically recorded. Notice that no connection to a PC is required and the system will work as long as the battery lasts and there is memory space. The pen batteries last roughly 40 hours before they have to be replaced.

Taking notes

You can add a note by pressing the button and the LCD screen shows a count of the number of notes you have stored. At first there is a slight worry that the device is actually recording what you are drawing but as you use it confidence grows. Better feedback on the progress of storing a note would still be welcome as would be an indication of how much memory is left. The LCD simply shows a memory full message when the memory is over 90% used. In normal use the memory unit is capable of storing 100 A4 pages full of text.

There is a power saving mode which switches the unit off after 10 minutes of no activity. Use is fairly natural but you do have to be careful not to put anything between the pen and the memory unit. Once you have recorded some handwriting you can keep it stored on the unit or transfer it to a PC. To do this you need to install the drivers and the Note Manager application from the CD. This provides a simple filing system for your raw sketches and handwriting.

Exchanging notes

You can email or print notes and save them in raw data format or as JPEGs. Notes can also be sent to other users on the network and uploaded to the pen. You can also use the pen while the memory unit is connected to the PC. In this mode a window opens and you can see what you are drawing or writing. In practice, the time lag is just long enough to make it difficult to watch. It is much better only to look at the screen every so often to check that everything is working. The application comes with some basic editing tools such as an eraser.

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