SolidTek DigiMemo 692 Digital Notepad with Memory
The Digimemo 692 Digital Notepad 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 you use it and the technology fails, you are left with the ultimate safe, low tech backup - ink notes on paper 3) it is lighter and easier to use when on the move (walking through a building taking notes, or sitting in a meeting where a laptop would be awkward for instance). The main question for me was how well the handwriting recognition could be made to work.
So far I am cautiously pleased. DM works as advertised. The unit is light, the pen comfortable in the hand, and writing is faithfully recorded.. The image on the computer screen is a faithful representation of the page (occasionally small strokes are missed),
The software interface for dumping pages on the PC is acceptable - it could be smoother but works without any glitches or major hassles. Actually, I rarely used it, since most of my uploading is done directly to the Hwr recognition program (more below). It is surprisingly good a recognizing tables as tables/spreadsheets.
For me, this unit would be largely useless without HWR. I found that Myscript does a surprisingly good job of reading my scrawl (it is a scrawl - my handwriting is terrible, I often print more than write, but found it reads script about as well as printing). If you write neatly the whole process is much easier.
Myscript is particularly useful if you 1) use the built in training program (helped some) and 2) 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 enter these wholesale. I now have hundreds. The handwritten "Wed td" at the top of a page comes out as "Wednesday To Do List."
My old Newton 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 most people - is that my own style adapts to what the system has shown it can recognize. People are good continual improvement machines.
This is not the ultimate system. The paper size is too small for some uses (unlike some reviewers, though, I have found 6X9 pads easy to find at drug or office supply stores). It would be nice if the system had a video out and/or drawing table functionality. The more expensive 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 thast feels like niggling.
This is a very good device but not all people or purposes. This is not for you if you need HWR but aren't willing to spend time making it work. But...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, 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 DM), 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.