Livescribe 2GB Pulse Smartpen

I watched countless YouTube video reviews of this gadget before buying one and thought I'd write one for Amazon.

Look and Feel

It's a lot lighter than I was expecting - about the weight of a decent fountain pen. It is fatter than a normal pen but I have large hands so it feels quite good to write with. I've also noticed that the onboard microphone does not pick up the nib scratching on the paper, as other reviewers have noted. This could be due to a firmware upgrade I guess.
It has no clip so there is a tendency for it to role away from you when you put it down. This could be expensive if you let it roll off the desk and it breaks.

Memory Usage

The pen comes with 2GB of storage but you don't get all of it for your own usage. Without doing anything with the pen you lose 129.50MB to System files, 46.90MB for Applications and 30.74MB to Files. That leaves you with 1.80GB. This shouldn't be a problem but I thought it worth mentioning.

Error 3 - File Limit - I read on the internet that the pen has a limitation of 400 sound files. This probably isn't an issue for students that record long lectures but for me, recording shorter interviews with clients, this might be a problem. The only solution offered by Livescribe it to delete some of your files. Hopefully they will provide some kind of firmware update to fix this in the future.

Firmware Updates

Before you connect the pen to your computer you should download the desktop software from the U.S. website (not available from the UK distributer website).
The first time you dock the pen in the USB cradle it will ask you to download firmware updates. I did this as a matter of course as I guessed there would be bug fixes involved. When you start this procedure you might want to go and make a cup of coffee as it takes quite a while. It downloads the updates first then copies them to the pen.

USB Docking Station

Not as weighty as I had expected but it does have rubber feet so it doesn't slide around on the desk. It's magnetised and the pen snaps nicely into place when you dock it and doesn't fall out. They've supplied a hole to help you take out the ink cartridge but I haven't needed to use it because it's easy enough to remove them with your finger and thumb. I guess it's useful if you don't want to get ink on your fingers.

OCR

The pen does not have any Optical Character Recognition software included. This would be useful for converting your hand-written notes into text for copying into documents. You can download some third party software ($29.95) for this and the reviews are good, but I haven't done this yet.

Pen Case

Livescribe have downgraded this case and it no longer has the little window so you can see if the pen has turned on accidentally. Nor does it have the pocket on the back for spare ink refills. I think both of these downgrades are sad. Firstly, because it is all too easy to turn the pen on by mistake - it only takes a short tap to turn it on and it doesn't seem to go to sleep automatically. Secondly, I now have to find somewhere to store the spare ink cartridges so I have one when needed.

Lanyard

This is no longer included in the pack. I guess nobody was geeky enough to wear the pen around their neck so they dropped it.

Headphones

I don't really get on with the supplied headphones. The `bud' type headphones never stay in my ears so if I ever use them I'll probably rest them on the table or hang them around my neck. The only real benefit I have found with them is that they record in stereo, which is a bit of a gimmick in my book for this kind of gadget.

Price

I decided to buy from Amazon for 2 reasons. Firstly, Amazon has never let me down and I ordered the pen on Saturday and it arrived Monday morning. Secondly, the price on the UK distributer's website was a penny more BEFORE they added VAT onto it and you don't get any extras for ordering from them.
It's the same story with the consumables (paper and ink) but they do have a larger selection than Amazon, including A4 size pads.

Conclusion

It is expensive (I paid £129.99) but the benefits I have gained in my job outweigh this, as I have to take notes all the time and usually forget to write everything down and this records the whole conversation so I can play it back and fill in the gaps in my notes. I would suggest asking your customers if they mind being recorded before you use it, just in case they object.

Bottom line - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I had this pen for Christmas ... after 4 days of messing about setting it up it all works fine and does what it says extreemly well. I am happy with the product but the reason for the 3 stars is because of the set up and help.

The software needed downloading for install .... fine but the pens firmware (actual software in the pen) also needed updating and on my system (Vista 64 bit) it said it had done this but it hadn't (you can check the firmware version on the pen). In fact it was not clear it needed to be done at all. The help documentation in pdf is confusing as few of the help guides are 'self contained' instructions. You are sent from page to page on one topic and get confused easily. The installation requirements are NOT clear and tab blindness (you don't automatically see the correct tabs) makes it difficult.

Once I'd played about and found the software to download (found how from a users blog not the Livescribe site) it worked on the paper that came with the pen. When I went to use 'new' paper pads they would not upload. This took a simple hard reset of the pen by holding the pen button in for 10 secs .... fine you may say, but no help on this from the official website, I had to solve this by searching other user blogs. This was just my experience and the frustration of setting it up. Now it is all working the pen is actually very very good and I like it. I did want to throw it through the window when setting up though.

Initially, when I purchased this product to try something new, I wasn't sure how useful it would be or how often I would use it. However, having owned it now for a few months, it has turned out to be one of the most valuable purchases I have ever made - I carry it with me at most times and make a lot of use of the Smartpen on a daily basis.

Being a student, this pen comes in remarkably useful - using it to take notes in lectures is no more difficult than using traditional pen and paper. And transferring all of the notes to my laptop has meant that if there is a lecture I cannot completely remember, I can very easily refresh my memory at any time!

The pen itself is sleek and not noticeably heavier than a traditional pen. I very quickly became used to holding and using the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen. And the dot paper quickly looks and feels like normal writing paper too. I would recommend the 2GB version for students, as this will hold probably about the right number of lectures before needing to archive the content from the pen itself.