Dane-Elec Zpen

We’ve looked at a couple of notetaking devices recently, such as the Oxford Papershow and the Livescribe, both of which rely on special paper. The Dane-Elec has no such restrictions.

Instead it has a special receiver that clips to the top of whatever paper you are writing on. This tracks the position of the pen to build an image of your notes.

The receiver has a USB plug built in so there’s no need to carry cables around. All the manuals and drivers are included on the receiver. There’s 1GB of storage space on the receiver so it has plenty of space to store notes. Hundreds according to Dane-Elec.

The pen is normal sized, a relief after the larger pens that include a scanner and it takes normal ballpoint refills. Although the receiver can recharge from the USB socket, the pen uses a couple of watch batteries.

To capture a page of notes, attach the receiver to the page and switch it on. Start writing and the receiver copies the writing. A new page is created when the receiver is unclipped and replaced.

All the software for reading the notes is included on the receiver. You can view notes in Windows, Mac and even some distributions of Linux. Notes can then be saved as a PDF file.

We were impressed that the Zpen includes handwriting software as this solves the biggest problem of taking notes as images. It might not be 100 per cent accurate but it’s faster than typing everything from scratch. Sections of the page can be marked as images so you don’t lose drawings. This also improved the layout of text when not writing in large blocks. We recommend completing the training guide as this improves recognition.

The Zpen is £74, so it’s cheaper than the equivalents we’ve looked at and crucially, isn’t dependent on special paper.