No more laptop in meetings!

I purchased the Digimemo 692 Digital Notepad so that I could comfortably take notes while riding on a train, touring/walking around a site, or just laying in bed, and not have to re-enter all the information on my PC. Digimemo made sense to me for several reasons; 1) it is cheap - $90 or - is a small risk to take on a new technology; 2) if I use it and the technology somehow fails, I are left with the ultimate safe, low tech backup - notes in ink on paper; 3) it is lighter and easier to use when on the move (such as walking through a building taking notes, or sitting in a meeting where a laptop would feel awkward). The main question in my mind was how well the handwriting recognition could be made to work. As a former Newton user I knew that handwriting recognition was tricky but has great potential.

So far, after about a month, I am cautiously pleased. First, I have to say that Digimemo works as advertised. The unit is light, the pen comfortable in the hand, and pen strokes are faithfully recorded - the image on the computer screen is a faithful representation of the page. Occasionally small strokes are missed - I haven’t yet figured out any rhyme or reason for that, but so far that has been only a minor bother.

The software interface for dumping pages on the PC is not brilliant but acceptable - it could be smoother but works without major glitches or hassles. Actually, I rarely used it, since most of my uploading is done directly to the Handwriting recognition recognition program (more below).

For me, this unit would be largely useless without Handwriting Recognition. I have tried Evernote plus and Myscript (Myscript 2.0) . While Evernote is a fascinating technology and may be very useful as a way of storing all sorts of information I found (contrary to some online discussion) that Myscript does a much better job of reading my scrawl. Note that it is a scrawl - my handwriting is terrible. In fact, for this purpose I often print more than write. If you write neatly the whole process is much easier..

Myscript has two main several advantages over Evernote Plus for Handwriting recognition: 1) it has a training program so that the system can learn your personal handwriting style (which I found only somewhat useful), and 2) it allows you to create lists of words (“Personal Lexicon”) and shorthand conversions (“Auto replacements”). The former is good to aid recognition of specialized and technical terms, names, etc. The latter is the most useful feature, though. With it you can create an entire shorthand (“&” becomes “and” “sy” becomes “Sincerely Yours” etc.). Best of all, I discovered an undocumented feature. Instead of entering shorthands or lexicon words one at a time you can simply open the .txt file (“Autoreplacements.txt” and “lexicon.txt” in the Myscript folder) and add these wholesale. I now have hundreds. The handwritten “Wed td” at the top of a page comes out as “Wednesday To Do List.” Very nice. Myscript,. by the way, surprisingly good at recognizing handwritten tables as tables/spreadsheets.

As a former Newton user and admirer, I am not totally enamored with Myscript. The Newton Handwriting recognition system seemed similar, but learned from corrections, so it became increasingly accurate. Myscript doesn’t (I asked - the nice people who answer my emails told me that it is trickier to implement than I suspect). People do learn though, so what happens to me - and I’m sure to most Mysript users - is that my own style adapts to what the system has shown it can recognize. People are good continual improvement machines.

Handwriting recognition, at this point in time, is like voice recognition (such as Dragon Naturally Speaking). It has gone beyond the talking dog stage (“its not so much that he does it well, but that he does it at all that amazes”) but, unless your handwriting is much better than mine, you will still spend time reviewing and correcting mis-recognitions. It is much better than re-typing notes from scratch, but not full recognition, yet. I’m betting this technology shows major gains in the next few years.

This is not the ultimate system. The paper size is too small for some uses. Also, it would be nice if the system had video output and/or drawing table functionality. The more expensive Adesso Cyberpad takes 8.5" X 11" paper and serves as a tablet, I am told, and the Acecad folks indicated that the next version of Digimemo (“out soon”) will also.

The batteries really do last a long time (100 hours as advertised seems about right). It would be nice if the lcd screen on the clipboard did more than show if a page is written or blank, but that feels like niggling.

This is a very good device for several, but not all purposes. If you hate taking out a laptop in meetings or classrooms, if you are disorganized and like having your written notes together in one place (the real strength of Evernote), if you need to draw something and shoot it off in an email (the ability to connect to mobile web for this would be a killer app for Digimemo), or if you need to take notes while standing or walking and don’t want to have to re-type them all, then this may be a great device for you.