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Batteries For Your Pen And Paper?
An anonymous reader writes "We've been hearing about the paperless office for years now, but we never seem to get any nearer to that environmentally friendly nirvana. It's just too easy to jot things down on a piece of paper, far easier than using a PDA. So maybe a digital pen and paper is the answer? The people at Pegasus, inventor of the Mobile NoteTaker certainly think so. Unfortunately, the
guy who reviewed the NoteTaker thinks otherwise."
This sums it up for me:
"Now, as a cheap gadget this would all be perfectly acceptable. But when put within the context of its price it borders on crazy. I am all for convergence technologies, but when you consider the Mobile NoteTaker is priced at just under £150 I cannot see many takers. This is more expensive than some colour PDAs we have had in the labs and 50 per cent more than the very useable palmOne Zire 31 which can be found for less than £100. "
I figure that if a person cannot use a PDA they are not going to be able to really use this. If you are one of those people, carry a pack of yellow-stickies.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
for £149, couldn't you just get a cheap PDA and just never take it out of notepad mode? plus if you ever felt the incentive to actually use it, you've got that opportunity. Get a pen-shaped stylus and you're set.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
I mean, who's going to use digital when a Bic and a Sticky....How does one transfer digital notes to your mother/spouse/friend?
:)
This will become about as widespread as MS BOB
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
Environmentally friendly? Creating batteries, pens, and producing resistors are not environmentally friendly...I'm not sure what they really mean. Can anybody explain?
Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
According to the article: 50 pages, tiny, feels cheap, excessive batteries, can't even exit some of the menus. Overall rating = 4/10
I think I'll pass for now, especially with the £150 (~$270)
The reviewer didn't say a digital pen and paper is a bad idea. All the negative comments in the article are aimed at this implementation.
The build quality is cheap, it's big and bulky, it requires MS Office, etc.
The reviewer seemed to like what the technology had to offer, this implementation was just junky.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Cheap product + fancy marketing = $225 piece of junk. I've seen a bunch of products that promised to read your writing over the years, starting back with the Newton. Until the logic gets better in reading the writing theres no reason to make them out of good materials, cuz no one is going to use them as writing pads.
Palm pilot might not do to hot at reading your writing, but its not intended as an imput device.
Drop 'em! Now! Hold your hands up high, and don't make a move. Licence and registration, please.... Now I will need your signature... oh wait.
I ruined the last piece of digital paper I had by using correction fluid to erase my mistakes.
You can get smaller, lighter, and easier to use PDAs with a better screen for that kind of money. And they can also serve as handwriting capture devices if that's what you want. If someone had shown me this gadget and asked me to guess how much it cost, I'd have been off by a factor of 10, because it looks comparable to the Palm knock-offs Royal was selling for $50 four years ago... and I'm sure you can buy equivalents for $15-$20 today.
Yeesh. The problem here isn't that digital note taking as a problem, it's that Pegasus is charging ten times what it's worth (or, alternatively, doing ten times less than they should for the money they charge).
The Logitech IO pen uses a small camera and special paper with faint dots printed on it to record what you have written, then transfer them over bluetooth to your computer, phone, $DEVICE.
its slick in principle, but clunky, large, and uses expensive paper...
e to the pi i plus one equals zero
Logitech did this a long time ago with the io
What are these technologies?
/me boggles mind
hrmm... nothing there...
Is this a new technology developed and perfected overseas, that is just now landing in North America? What is this thing you call "Pen"? What is this thing called "Paper"?
do() || do_not();
The paperless office will, like privatized Social Security, never happen.
Not that it can't work, it just won't happen. Many years ago Xerox was hearing this new "buzzword" paperless office so much they decided to do something. They took a bunch of guys and sent them down to Palo Alto and told them to come back with this paperless office.
Well, they went down there and developed a number of things, Ethernet and GUI's being among the new things, and brought it back to show their bosses.
Once the head guys saw it they said: "No one will use this!".
Of course they were partly wrong, but partly right. Of course we use GUI's and Ethernet, but still no paperless office. And that "Office of the Future" was developed in 1970. 34 years later and we have no paperless office.
Why? It isn't feasible. As more computers go into the office, it seems to me that more paperwork is needed... just to take care of those computers.
Electronics are "earth friendly" either, so that isn't a good reason to ditch paper and pen. Trees for pencils and paper are usually grown on farms or their replacements planted immediately -- not so easy to replace the heavy metals sometimes used in electronics.
Plus... dumping paper in China isn't likely to kill their citizens like computer equipment dumped there does. (But as long as China takes the check for dumping services, that is partly their fault)
Get your Unix fortune now!
For note taking (and book reading, by the way), we humans like something that falls within the realm of experiences that we evolved to deal with. Scratching with a pen on paper, which generates tactile stimuli and visual ones, seems to fit the bill nicely since we all are apt to do this (Post-It notes, anyone?). So, until we have e-paper that can be maltreated just like r-paper (real paper) with an e-pen that can be handled like an r-pen, all digital note taking technologies are going to fail. It should be clear by now that it is almost impossible to mould people into a particular technology. If you don't believe me, then why is you monitor full of post-it notes?
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
Electronics are "earth friendly"
should read
Electronics aren't "earth friendly"
Sorry to correct myself, I swear I previewed... I guess if it looks right the first 3 times you look once more doen't help.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Even if the device worked perfectly, and the cost was in line with "pencil & paper," it still wouldn't help us approach the paperless office "nirvana." I've worked in a couple of hospitals now, both of which went through very expensive systems upgrades, the partial justification of which was to reduce reliance on paper. In both cases even more paper was generated than before.
The problem is that patient records, billing records, purchase orders, etc., all need to be both safe and accessable. If the hard drive crashes, or the network goes down, staff is without the documentation they need to perform their duties. With a paper record at hand, they can continue to do their jobs, at least to some degree, regardless of the state of the primary, electronic, "paperless" system.
I just scribble on that for quick notes + diagrams. I bought a Zaurus as a tiny computer, and really like it, but my Palm [Pilot] is still my PDA.
As regards the paperless office, Brown and Duguid's book "The Social Life of Information" is very informative in this regard. It points out that there are many features of paper that have yet to be duplicated, let alone surpassed, by current paper replacements. Until we get all of the advantages of paper with none of the current disadvantages, the paperless office is still a distant dream.
...before you spew crap.
It doesn't even try to read your handwriting, it stores it as an image.
Whats the killer app here? no-one has found a reason yet that a PDA is more useful than some paper, most people who even have PDAs only use them for games really, everyone stores their numbers on their phones and notes on paper. Stick a very easy input system on a phone (as easy as a pen), make it easy and free to send anywhere and people might just do it. a way of writing that feels so good you would rather use it than pen and paper, the recognition doesnt need to be perfect, but instead of converting it right there it could be converted and kept with the original notes - when you want to search for something you search the converted text - some of which will be wrong but hopefully enough to get the keywords, then you read the original handwriting on your very hi-res screen and if you want you can convert it and correct it properly.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
gorilla on my back...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
I'd much rather wait the required time for proper digital paper - you know the stuff, they brand it variaously as eInk, and ePaper, and what have you, but it is decidedly different from LCD screens: for a start it uses reflected light like, you know, normal paper.
It is, very slowly, coming to market. I think sony is releasing a device that uses it. Okay, it's an eBook reader and still a little on the clunky side (though still as slim as similar device using LCD), but it has the promise to (in the next 5 years or so) get a lot slimmer, and more efficient. What's more it just looks better.
Once that sort of thing really hits the mass market, then using it as a notepad might have some real relevance.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Hell, we don't even need that reason. He should be modded down just for his use of "paradigm shift"
Just because he likes anime doesn't mean he likes kiddie porn. Oh wait, yes it does.
Digital paper and pens will not be practical until you can write a note on your office desk and it can effortlessly and instantly appear on your home kitchen fridge.
These ideas of ubiquitous computing were postulated over 20 years ago (perhaps by Xerox?) and we are not much closer to making this a reality.
can't sleep. clowns will eat me.
Here: http://www.anoto.com/
l ?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=
Their concept will blow your mind. Basically the best integration between traditional paper and pens, computers and the Internet.
Wired (the magazine, not the website) ran an article about them a few years ago. You can read it here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.04/anoto.htm
Regards,
AIH
Nobox: Only simple products.
Next time take better care of the pictures you take of yourself.
Getting the little gits around here to use a pen and paper would be an improvement. The little rascles prefer a spray can and wall.
Most of my work is via keyboard, PDA entries on a touchscreen, but for taking notes a fountain pen is still the best. A gentle grip, minimal pressure, light weight, I can take notes rapidly and for extended periods with without fatigue.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
2) Requires Windows XP & Office to be used. That PDA is usable by itself, it doesn't need to be hooked into things to be useful.
Having said that, if they managed to get it to be used say like for photoshop/gimp/illistrator etc. I suspect this would be a hit with artists. Tablets are nice, however, they don't have the same type of feedback that pen & paper do. Because a lot of artsts I know will draw it on paper, then scan it in, and clean it up, and color if needed. Having something like this might allow them to import it easier.
In the article he writes Pegasus thinks they've found a bridging technolgy or something to that effect. I've seen similar writtings in the market spins of other similar products. All I see is someone getting tired of clipping the little reader on their notepad/having to carry around another gizmo/screwing around with inevitably buggy winbloze only software, loosing the reader in the dark recesses of their desk drawer and then using the fancy reader/ink pen on conventional stickies, legal pads and Franklins. All I see this ultimately doing is driving away more would-be converts. I hate this family of devices and I've never even played with one. As for importing hand written or drawn works we've had plenty of ways to do that for some time now. That's the way to market these things. Take a look at Nokia's Bluetooth pen. I read about it some time ago and if memory serves me right that's the spin they used. And yes, I'm too lazy to link ;-)
My suggestions? Well, the writter already listed some and I'm preaching to the choir. Perhaps if I was writting this with some snazy digital pen... Instant on. NO BOOT TIME! most PDA's have this already fairly well. Perhaps putting something in there wherein the PDA "knows" you want to just start jotting things down. I.E. when the status comes near the screen the unit wakes up and an input panel opens. I'd say the UI should allow for immediate input, preferably via fast, accurate and trainable handwritting recognition, and have say a small toolbar at the bottom. One would first jot down whatever it was and then hit the tool to file it under, eg contact, freehand/drawing, etc. Let's take that one step further and start parsing that input once the app is started so that say if it was a contact the app could try and sort it out. Perl anyone? Who wants to donate one of those new Zauri to me so I can get started hacking this together? ;-)
Other things I would do would be to keep the instant-on app launching buttons Palm has. That's truly useful. Those should also launch straight into the app screen and not the jot screen I mentioned. More cellphone integration or better yet let's retry the cellphone module, a.k.a Visor springboard. SDIO GSM/CDMA phonecard with a BT headset anyone? I like that new S/E headset with the small cord and lapel clip display. How about just getting more simple cellphones out there with BT or WiFi and getting the nice PDA's with both below that $450 barrier? $299 seems better and just loose some of the fat. And would someone please get it into M$'s head that a PDA UI need NOT look and work like fscking Windows? Clicking down three to five layers to get to a hand writting app is just fucking stupid. Finally, if the physical pen tip to screen interface could be made better that would help. If someone would come up with the just right combination of screen surface and pen tip that would help. I'd also bet that focusing more on using landscape orientation for handwritting and perhaps some well thought out auto-scrolling as one writes on the virtual paper might be a nice touch. Once again, send me that Linuxed-up Zaurus you don't really need and I'll get right to work on it ;-)
They suck for note taking.
I'm sure that higher end PDAs with high-res screens and accurate digitisers are way better these days, but based on my old Palm IIIc using it to take notes is a big no-no.
The limited resolution compared to pen and paper for a start. Unless you write big all you'll get is a pixelly mess. Coupled with terrible accuracy with the touch screen and you get a mess even if you try to write carefully and large. Of course, if you write large, then you can't write the message in the area you want to write it in.
A pad of post it notes is simply a better option for most quick notes. If some need to be on the computer, spend the minute typing it into your preferred notes application.
The author seems to think this is a neat idea, just a really poor implementation. For the cost, I'd rather not have to carry around a cell, PDA, this thing in my pockets.
Now a pressure-sensitive bluetooth pen that could store data on a PDA or (gasp!) a cell phone, that's something I'd buy! Imagine just pulling out your pen, jotting some imaginary notes on the wall, chair, arm, etc (assuming ink portion is retractible) and clicking a button to store on your cell as an image. That would be slick.
The pen and paper is one of these items. It will be here long after my children are gone. The paper may not be made of wood or the pen use ink like today, but humans will always have a need to write down quick thoughts and notes until we are embedded with microprocessors at birth. IMHO anyway...
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
This VPen seems to be the technology in the new Logitech laser mouse put in a bluetooth enabled pen pen shaped thing. There has not been an update in the news or press release area since 2002. http://www.otmtech.com/vpen.asp
The Logitech io Personal Digital Pen that uses Anoto's technology works mighty fine.
Who the hell get's all fired up about pens? Bah! Gimme a cheap Papermate Write Bros. pen, and I'm set. No fuss, no muss.
We have been using the Anoto paper with a few of the digital pens (each with varying ease of use), and have created some useful systems in the process. Most notably:
- François Guimbretière's home page, which has links to all of the Paper Augmented Digital Documents (PADD) papers.
- ProofRite - A combination of a distributed PADD infrstructure and an extension to AbiWord. It allows for annotations to be incorporated into AbiWord documents, so that Tablet PC users may mark up their document on the screen. Further, users may print an AbiWord document, annotate it on Anoto paper, and have their strokes incorporated into the document.
I have also made a prototype with which users may compose music on Anoto paper and have it automatically converted to a Finale file (a popular piece of composition software), or annotate a printed Finale file and incorporate them back into the file.The gap between paper and computers has existed for too long. With this research and the amazing new hardware, I personally believe we'll be seeing the gap close quickly.
-Dave
Maybe the Negro hand is better suited to manipulating large items like basketballs and spray cans instead of a pen.
Never understood the big deal with pen/pencils. Some people seem to think that once you can get the computer to act like a notepad, it will be magically easier to use. I've used Tablet PCs before. They're not all that useful. Most of the time, I just use them as a regular laptops. The whole using the pen thing is cool for about 10 minutes. Other than drawing, I would much rather type. Maybe it's because I started using the computer when I was 8 and am used to typing. Or maybe an improvement GUI would solve a lot of the problems.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
...the fountain pen is limiting your abilty to write much, therefore your hand is rested, by default. It's the difference between walking and running.
everyone stores their numbers on their phones and notes on paper
I don't. I used to carry an address book and then later keep everything on my computer and print my phone numbers out (never stored them in the phone, phones aren't reliable... they have short battery lives, the software is controlled by the cellular company as often as not), kept notes on paper, had a wallet simply bulging with business cards.
Now I carry a PDA, it's got a thousand memos and contacts, and even if it didn't do anything more than that it'd be worth it. But I've got a dozen novels, city maps, abbreviated versions of a dozen newspapers updated every time I sync, I don't need to be paying online charges for any of this...
Yes, it's got a dozen games as well, but I don't play them nearly as often as I use the ever-growing and critical information on my PDA. I'm pulling it out all the time, making notes about everything: medication, work, people, shopping lists, things to look up when I have the leisure. The only thing I could think to add to it is voice transcription... I tried using the voice recorder, but I never got around to transcribing the recordings. I don't care if the transcription happened offline or in the background, but putting the words into text is key.
If people just play games on them, maybe they have the wrong PDA?
...is the fact that you need a highly specific piece of software to even be able to *use* it.
And that is: MS Office XP. Let's not fight about MS or !MS, but the idea that you can only use a rather expensive, general-purpose hardware device if you use the latest version of an expensive (and in my eyes, not very useful) software product from another company is simply ridiculous.
Oh, well.
Next!
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
***MODDERS***
Please read the parent(AC) dustinbarbour was responding to. That AC comment said something about c.pr0n and dustin was simply calling the Anonymous Coward out on it.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
I must be one of the few people who found this a tremendous piece of hardware, because they discontinued it after a while and the product is no longer supported. But it used a very comfortable pen, and wrote on ordinary notepads. The hardware, I thought, was extremely well done, and I found it a breeze to use.
The problem was the software, which was written by IBM and left the distinct impression that it was little more than a demonstration-of-principle that should never have left the lab. Oddly enough, the handwriting-to-text portion was outstanding; I could write pages of notes and it would transform my handwriting to text with almost 100% accuracy. (One could always simply store the pages as images if one's handwriting wasn't neat.) BUT the software gave you no way to move things around easily, no way to file your pages nicely, in fact, no way to do much useful with your jottings at all once you had moved them on to your computer. And the software wasn't very stable, either.
I kept waiting for a software upgrade, to bring the software up to a standard that was close to the quality of the hardware, but it never happened. I wish that Cross would resurrect this technology, but with some decent software behind it. But it'll never happen :-( I'm sure that the failure last time means that they're now convinced that there's no market for this kind of product.
I thought I would use my PDA for everything, and I did for the first 3 months, but then I started opting for paper for some things -- like quick sketches of ideas and plans -- and then I stopped reading books from my PDA because my eyesight was strained and I had to flip through several screens just to read a single real page.
The things taht I write by hand at work tends to be equations, numbers and formulae. I produce literally lever arch folders full of hand written calcs (with loads of output from analysis programs as well), and I can't see any technology being able to reproduce the speed that I can jot down thoughts / sketches coming around any time soon.
Plus, I need my calcs to be archivable and readable for at least 70 years (or however long the building remains standing), and it would be a brave man who would put money on whatever tech was used still working in 70 years. i know there are issues re paper and ink degrading but I don't think that would happen with pencil and paper in that time scale.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World" 1 John 4:14
Not to burst everyone's rhetorical bubbles, but this is just a Seiko InkLink (which has unfortunately been discontinued) with some built-in memory in a MUCH larger unit. The InkLink is a nice piece of equipment, quite inobtrusive, and sold for about 100 dollars.
The IBM TransNote didn't sell well. Anyone here own one?
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
If it can be done with pen and paper-why should we bother to do it electronically?
If I would want my notes to be available electronically, I would take them on a PDA! But in fact, I don't, because I don't need them on the PC 99% of the time and if I need a particular one I just scan it.
Everything the device promises can be done with today's means in a similarly effective way. Well, maybe it has some specialty applications that no one knows of...
where's all that Karma?
There used to be a product called InkLink, where you clipped a reciever onto the top of a notepad, and wrote with a special pen, and it would be able to transfer everything you wrote into your PDA. (Kinda like NoteTaker) But the website of the manufacturer http://www.siibusinessproducts.com/ doesn't have it listed as a product anymore, but it was in my PDA's user manual as an accessory.
and TablePC's are pretty cool.
I think we are getting closer to a "paperless office", just look how much more we use email now.
The problem is, theres no fast way to enter text but still have a small device.
It's GBP not lb!
Number one dumb thing about this is, handwritten notes are not even remotely the issue. I mean, I'm a notepad addict, I admit. Constantly have four or five legal pads going to keep track of things at work. So? Maybe I use half a dozen a month, maybe. Meantime, the office chews through about five times that weekly, pure waste, why? Wasteful printing, people who cannot negotiate an email or a spreadsheet unless it is printed out, people printing stuff and totally forgetting about it so it sits around for a few days before being tossed, people clumsily hitting the wrong toggle, causing some report robot to spew five hundred pages of useless data out, and being too lazy to torque their fat asses out of their chairs to go hit the cancel button somewhere around page fourteen (duh, there's a cancel button? okay, gettin' into pet peeves now). Saw this one yesterday - somebody took an online form, meant to be filled out and delivered electronically, printed it, filled it out by hand, and faxed it. For a while do to some dumb setup some people were printing a ridiculous and pointless cover sheet every single print job. Oh yeah, gotta call IT about that, get to that tomorrow, easy enough just to toss it. Oh, make a dozen copies of these powerpoint handouts, yeah so everybody at that meeting can doodle on them, write a couple of pointless points, and then toss them out within a couple days of the meeting. I mean, show of hands, how many find that too much paper on their desk is a problem?
It's just too damn easy to generate paper, and people are lazy, and set in their ways. I think a probable and sad component is that making stuff into hard copy gives a false sense of productivity (that presentation may have been a bunch of malarky but everyone got a handout!) I bet almost any office could reduce it's paper use at least by half if it enforced strict policies to eliminate waste and curb questionable reproduction and printing. Yeah, show of hands, who wants to be in charge of that one?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I still believe it's achievable. What's needed are rugged displays (not made of glass like LCDs) built into rugged, thin packages that are mostly display, without mechanical stuff that can break (buttons, knobs, slots, etc.). Like the PADDs on Star Trek. We keep getting closer but some of the technology doesn't quite exist yet. Also some good software is needed. Some of what's available for tablet PCs comes close. Of course it ought to be free software, and there should be a reusable library for certain features needed by pen-based apps which are rare and are considered advanced now but really are necessary for usability. I intend to work on it eventually.
Once the technology becomes mature, the changes and upgrades need to be managed carefully so that old devices do not become obsolete. Planned obsolescence is what makes computers bad for the environment. The ultimate PADD should be built rugged enough to last decades, and as its processor becomes slow relative to the newest ones, it should be able to depend more on resources that are available on the network, so that it is still useable. (Past a certain point, the amount of speed and memory and resolution that a device has is going to dwarf most everyday 2D work, and the devices can be considered mature. We just aren't there yet.) The network protocols should not change too much; it must be very easy to share information between them. (For a while you could count on being able to send business cards via IR between Palms and phones etc. and that was very cool, but now that feature is getting left out of some newer devices, or replaced with things like Bluetooth, which is probably also ephemeral.) One appeal of paper is that you can have many sheets of it and spread them around, putting a lot of information within your field of view; but if the PADDs were also abundant, you could do the same thing; so there would be no reason to throw them out just because they are not the latest models. If all else fails you could put them on a shelf like books and they could participate in a distributed computing grid, until you need an extra display for something. At 1/4" thick they wouldn't constitute the kind of clutter that extra desktop PCs do now. And eventually even the homeless will be carrying them around and have internet access via ubiquitous free wireless networks.
I don't think that printing books is so terrible for the environment, and can relate to those who say that they will never get past the need to read books on real paper, even as I imagine that they will really be mostly obsolete eventually. But a lot of paper sure gets wasted on temporary printouts of stuff at work, newspapers, and junk mail. If all of that got done electronically in a couple decades or so it would be a big improvement. The reasons that it hasn't IMO are lack of standards, and too much incompatibility and immaturity in the technology.
BTW the idea in this article was already done at least once... remember the Cross digital pen? And there are a lot of varieties of digital whiteboards (some scan the board, some use ultrasound or optical methods to track the markers).
We've printed out so much garbage at our office that we have nearly run out of paper. Voila! The paperless office.
Seriously, computers have made it so much easier to print, reprint, cut and paste, run off a copy of someone's slideshow full of clip-art, etc. No wonder demand for paper hasn't died out - it is easier than ever to fill a page and print it.
Typing was hard work - so too writing all those pages by hand. And printed paper lasts longer than floppy disks. Ever seen a "bad sector" message from reading a piece of paper?
I am anarch of all I survey.
At the risk of being flamed... TABLET PC. If the idea is to reduce paper - to keep electronic copies - wow, is it ever the way to go. I'm a University student and I've just recently got a tablet - being a "mature" student, my experience at the different companies I've worked at (and for which, I've all used laptops) makes the Tablet's abilities overshadow the faster processors or gizmos I've seen in laptops. Over the past academic year (i.e. 8 months), I've accumulated over a bookshelf's (one shelf) worth of NOTES! It's crazy - all of them, written, one by one. Getting this will certainly reduce my paper-load, not to mention the back-breaking bag-load whilst travelling around campus. Granted, the laptop isn't the lightest to begin with - but I have notes - electronic and scanned (there's no escaping writing some things - like through homework or seminars) - with me all the time. I'm less likely to print out my notes as well - while I definitely favour paper over computer-screen, a tablet pc fits the way I read (letter-size), and its all centralized. Plus, the thing actually works. Kudos to the MS folks that thought of this. I can write, draw, convert-to-text... Translation's wonderful (I print when I write anyhow). There's a whole myriad of applications for this, and I haven't yet dug into the uses for technical material such as engineering blueprints.