Livescribe 2GB Echo Smartpen

I have been using this for about two weeks to take notes at university. I am a social science student and as such there is a lot of note taking and lectures in my courses which is the reason I wanted this pen, as I thought it would better help me prepare course outlines and study guides by not having to retype my notes.Software 4/5The Echo desktop software is great and very straightforward to use. There is an app-store that was relatively tricky to find as the software sends you to livescribe store for pens instead of the app-store. The app-store is quite limited although I did have to pickup Myscript from there as the Echo software cannot convert handwriting to text which is why I deducted a point of it. There is a lot of potential to develop interesting apps but most where quite primitive falling in the realm of language phrasebooks and games instead of productivity tools.Pen 4/5The pen has plenty of amazing features such as the ability to play music and record audio in addition to recording handwriting. I wish there was a full translator as the demo included is a great concept but presently unavailable for purchase even if you want it. If I could I would have bought the translator as the ability to translate would have been phenomenally useful for taking language classes and for self study, its a shame its not included. The pens menu interface was also user friendly with a large variety of settings to play with. The cartridge is easy to change too you simply pull it out. My only serious gripe with this pen apart from the lack of a translator was that it was not ergonomic to write with as it is too large. The pen's weight was much lighter than I expected it however it was too thick and I found my fingers fatigued from holding it for too long, I have fairly large hands and still thought it was too hefty to hold. Despite this the pen writes quite well and the cartridge doesnt smudge. I find my handwriting has slightly improved as it needs to be legible in order for it to be converted into text.Overall 4.9/5This pen exceeded my expectations however I wish that it was more comfortable to write with, had the translator, and included handwriting to text conversion without the additional cost. These shortcomings were greatly offset by its features which definately work as advertised and the simple desktop software and pen UI made this a breeze to setup and use. Overall I would recommend this product to other students especially those with disabilities but wish that future models will have the missing features and be more ergonomic to write with.

Ok, this thing is simply cool. I had been looking for a very long time for a way to digitize my notes to make them easier to find. An associate of mine has one of these and after I asked he showed me what it can do and how it works. First off the fact that it gets my notes on the computer is great. If you are anything like I am, you take a lot of notes and then lose them. With this they are always available and the best thing is that the software makes them searchable. That is brilliant and it actually works.The second coolest thing about this is that it records the meeting / class / etc. as well. I haven't reduced the number of notes that I take (I thought I would) but I have noticed that when I have a question about a note that I can just listen to the recording. The part that makes it cool is that by tapping the pen on the note it plays the recording starting from that point. I don't have to try to find where it was discussed it just plays it.The pen is pretty nice. It feels like it is a quality device. The refills for it aren't very expensive and the paper that you use with it comes in a lot of varieties. So far I really like this but I have to say, my boss is not a fan. Now when he tells me something its recorded. Next time we talk about it and his memory of what he said doesn't match what I heard I can refer back to the note, tap it and he can hear exactly what he told me to do. Everyone in the meeting loves the look on his face when I play something back for him. 3 other associates have purchased these over the last couple weeks, our meetings are starting to look like a LiveScribe user convention.

So, this is somewhat wide-ranging, since I've had a rather extensivly bad experience with livescribe. I'll try and keep it brief and to the point and do my best to contain the frothy rage I feel at the waste of time and money this company has caused me.Step one: bought a used Pulse pen. didn't have time to get to using it for a bit over a month, when I finally booted it up, it was unusable. the display was dim to the point of only being readable in the closet, and it couldn't transfer anything to my computer. I never found out if that was the pen's fault (that would be my guess) or the software (which was the problem with my second try, with a brand new Echo.)But apparently it worked ok when the other person sold it, so somehow in the interim of a month and a half, just by sitting around, it because completely non-functional. Great ire and wrath that I could not return it to the seller, but them's the breaks. Breaks being the key word.So, unfortunately, I thought the problem was buying something used. I Got the echo. and it at least worked as advertised, when I was just using the pen to write and then replay audio by clicking on the pages. However, when I tried hooking it up to my computer, the real problems started. The software is horrible, unintuitive, ugly, hard to use, generally very poorly designed and not well maintained/updated. Even all that would have been manageable, but then I did a clean instal on my computer, and everything else worked fine, but when I tried to download the (very important) conversations I'd captures with the Echo, the software wouldn't recognize my pen. It was apparently bound to the previous install of the computer, or something? I proceeded to wait for customer support, and then spend over an hour doing things I'd already tried, until they finally sent me a janky little program that looked like one computer programmer had written it as a quick work-around one day, not for public consumption, that was supposed to deregister my pen so I could re-register it to my computer, but even that FAILED TO WORK. And they in effect said, "oh well, we can't help you" with a pathetic excuse to try calling apple support for help.Yeah, right, get charged for apple support just to have them send me back to Livescribe because this is obviously a problem with their software/hardware. I'm not wasting anymore time on this black hole company of ineptitude. It has been many, many years since I've encountered tech support and software that was this horrible. I can only assume they have a corner on the market or something that has made them just stop trying to give a consistent or even barely acceptable customer experience.BUYER BEWARE. Maybe it will work for you, if you're lucky, but such a company, who says "oh well, our software is glitchy, too bad, you can't use your $100-ish piece of tech anymore. Tough. Try wasting time with the obviously-not-responsible manufacturer of your computer" is not deserving of ANYBODY'S patronage. Go find another company that actually cares about it's customers. If you give them your money you're just encouraging bad customer support practices.Alternately, if you want to experience the absolute pinnacle of tech rage, by all means, get this pen and try use the computer software interface as much as possible, as this company and it's software is the very best rage generator I've encountered in years. Five stars would feel uncontrollable desire to smash computer again.