Pen Input?

[honeybee]

I am looking for a device with which I can take down notes on paper and transfer it to a PC later. Handwriting recognition should work, either through the device's bundled software or through Windows 7/Office suite.

There's a local brand iBall with a product called TakeNote which allows you to write down notes on an A4 size paper and transfer them to a PC as image files. You can take down notes even when not connected to a PC, which is a great plus. Don't know if handwriting recognition is any good, though they claim to have bundled software for it. No demos available on this, either offline or online.

Another option is Wacom, but I don't know if any of their products allow me to write on a plain paper and then transfer it to the PC.

I need this device for taking down notes, annotating documents and drawing diagrams for illustrating the flow of work or prototyping (basic/sketchy, not very graphic), and not for graphics designing or photo editing.

Have any of you been using a similar product?

[jmcilhinney]

I haven't used it but I just saw this in a store catalogue yesterday:

http://www.livescribe.com/en-gb/smartpen/echo/

[honeybee]

I went through the LiveScribe website, but they use a special type of stationery which will cost a lot in terms of running expenses. I won't have the freedom to use any available paper. Other than this point, the product seems to be good in taking down notes. And one other worry is I don't always want to capture everything that's being said in meetings

I checked out Wacom Inkling which is supposed to provide a similar facility, but it's geared towards graphics and drawing more than handwriting, and even though you could argue handwriting is just another form of drawing, one of the reviews says it's not so great in capturing all the strokes.

.

[dilettante]

You might be better off using pen and paper and then scanning it. Lots of good scanners now, often with OCR software bundled. Not as elegant as a "magic pen" but probably cheaper with better results - or at least more flexibility.

Biggest problem with a halfway decent scanner is the desktop area needed though. Not really practical in the field either (contractor using his truck's front seat as a field office, etc.).


Still, there might be some good wall-hung sheet-through scanners. Or maybe an all-in-one to replace an exiting printer.

[honeybee]

You may be right, however since I want it mainly for my office use, I can't obviously demand a decent scanner so I could scan in my handwritten notes. I have the option to photograph them using my 5mp mobile camera, but then I would need a decent OCR software. Don't know if MS Word may be good enough.

As for Wacom Inkling or any other tablets, does anyone have any experience of using the tablet to input handwriting? I mean not as characters, but at least as drawings? As compared to drawings, handwriting would involve shorter curves and strokes, sometimes as small as putting dots in some places, like in the small case "i". Are these accurately recognized by the tablet? The review on the Inkling that I went through expressed some doubt, saying some of the strokes had been missed/not captured by the device. If I can be assured it will at least capture everything I draw/write, whether as an image or as text, I may be better able to decide.

[dilettante]

If you have an Android phone or tablet of reasonably recent vintage with a decent camera in it and a little power... you might consider something like FastOCR (free FastOCR Lite for evaluation). Might be others out there as well.

There is also software like Accusoft USB Scanner that lets you connect a desktop or portable scanner directly to your phone or tablet, but as far as I can see this particular product doesn't have OCR capability in it yet.

So with either a smartphone or tablet with a decent camera, or one along with a cheaper portable scanner... you ought to be able to get what you need. If a camera isn't precise enough you might combine both of those software apps to scan to an image with the one and then OCR the captured image with the other.

Or with some digging you might find one application that does it all.

Getting the stuff onto your office PC probably means either SD Card, USB flash drive, USB sync cable, some cloud storage, or another intermediary.


There might be something out there for iPhone/iPad (I wouldn't now) or even WinMo 6.x, but don't count on anything for the dying WinPhone 7/8 platforms.


However these may not be up to the task of handwriting recognition.

[honeybee]

Well, WinMo already has handwriting built into it, long before anyone else (or did Palm have it earlier?). So if I could get my hands on a decent 10" WinMo tablet, I wouldn't need a SmartPen. I have two WinMo phones (6.1 and 6.5) and both have fantastic handwriting recognition capabilities. So one (although the costliest) approach would be to wait till a Windows 8 tablet came out which is truly portable and has a largish screen.

I tried SimpleOCR, a supposedly good and free OCR, but it fails to convert even printed text (from a bank account opening form scanned as an image or as PDF) into English.

Is there a way the Office Starter pack will allow me to do OCR in Word? Does Word support it by way of scanned images?

[dilettante]

I used to use WinMo phones myself and you're right, the handwriting recognition was pretty good. Sadly they never did make tablets, and I can't think of any since the Big Change to Phone 7.

If you can do this on the PC there are lots of options for OCR, though I'm not sure which are good for handwriting. The handwriting IMEs (Input Method Editors) used by Office (and built in with XP Tablet Edition or all Vista and later) don't work for OCR purposes as far as I know.

If something like tablet device handwriting is good enough even iPads have handwriting IMEs now. The problem with tablet entry is that the move to capacitive screens instead of the older resistive plus stylus screens is a radical loss of precision. That's why handwriting input is far less popular than it was prior to iPhone coming on the scene.

I only brought up phones and tablets as a possible way to OCR written-out paper without having to attach anything directly to a corporate PC. Whether you can find OCR software that processes handwriting accurately enough is another matter of course.

Where is the OCR (Document And Imaging) in Microsoft Office 2007 covers the steps need to install the OCR capabilities (Microsoft Office Document Imaging). In a "managed" corporate environment this might require as much wheedling and bribing as acquiring a scanner though.

[dbasnett]

This is not an answer, but I found it interesting http://www.eink.com/

[honeybee]

Received an offer from IRIS for the latest Executive 2 smartpen, for 99 Euros. Checked out the Wacom Inkling, and though I can't find any info which says it's released/available in India, the price quoted was Aus$199. So at this point the IRIS smartpen is roughly 40% cheaper.

Question is how good is it? What are the running expenses?

Livescribe is daylight robbery compared to these products. The notebooks sell for around ten times the price of a normal notebook. So the running costs will be huge. Out of contention.

.