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Portables Hardware

Batteries For Your Pen And Paper? 120

Posted by timothy from the overwrought-and-underuseful dept.
An anonymous reader writes "We've been hearing about the paperless office for years now, but we never seem to get any nearer to that environmentally friendly nirvana. It's just too easy to jot things down on a piece of paper, far easier than using a PDA. So maybe a digital pen and paper is the answer? The people at Pegasus, inventor of the Mobile NoteTaker certainly think so. Unfortunately, the guy who reviewed the NoteTaker thinks otherwise."
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Batteries For Your Pen And Paper? More

Batteries For Your Pen And Paper?

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  • Why not a PDA? (Score:5, Informative)

    by lecithin ( 745575 ) * on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:15PM (#10221670)
    This sums it up for me:

    "Now, as a cheap gadget this would all be perfectly acceptable. But when put within the context of its price it borders on crazy. I am all for convergence technologies, but when you consider the Mobile NoteTaker is priced at just under £150 I cannot see many takers. This is more expensive than some colour PDAs we have had in the labs and 50 per cent more than the very useable palmOne Zire 31 which can be found for less than £100. "

    I figure that if a person cannot use a PDA they are not going to be able to really use this. If you are one of those people, carry a pack of yellow-stickies.

  • Another solution... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by erick99 ( 743982 ) <homerun@gmail.com> on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:16PM (#10221676)
    ...in search of a problem. I don't know what will replace pen & paper but it will be a huge paradigm shift and not just an electroninc similie of writing.

    Cheers,

    Erick

  • 149 lb? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by -kertrats- ( 718219 ) on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:16PM (#10221680) Journal
    for £149, couldn't you just get a cheap PDA and just never take it out of notepad mode? plus if you ever felt the incentive to actually use it, you've got that opportunity. Get a pen-shaped stylus and you're set.
    • They suck for note taking.

      I'm sure that higher end PDAs with high-res screens and accurate digitisers are way better these days, but based on my old Palm IIIc using it to take notes is a big no-no.

      The limited resolution compared to pen and paper for a start. Unless you write big all you'll get is a pixelly mess. Coupled with terrible accuracy with the touch screen and you get a mess even if you try to write carefully and large. Of course, if you write large, then you can't write the message in the area yo

  • What's the sense in digital pen/paper- (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thewldisntenuff ( 778302 ) on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:16PM (#10221681) Homepage
    I mean, who's going to use digital when a Bic and a Sticky....How does one transfer digital notes to your mother/spouse/friend?

    This will become about as widespread as MS BOB :)

    -thewldisntenuff

  • Environmentally friendly? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tajmorton ( 806296 ) on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:16PM (#10221682) Homepage
    Environmentally friendly? Creating batteries, pens, and producing resistors are not environmentally friendly...I'm not sure what they really mean. Can anybody explain?
    • I agree that the batteries and what not make this environmentally unfriendly, should'a been a cradle setup to recharge. but junk is junk.

      Why does /. bring us reviews of stuff thats getting panned, warning us or filler content?
    • This is a solution to please all the tree hugging hippies who are too stoned to actually know what really goes on in the world.

      It is quite clear that we are in a throw away society if something breaks we throw it out and get something newer and more sparkley.

      Which takes me to my tree hugger mode and I have to ask, which is easier to recycle, small pieces of paper and biros, or all this tech?
      At the end of the day which is the more eco-friendly solution? The paper or the tech?

      I'm not a tree hugger or eco m
    • "Can anybody explain?"

      Sure. The moron environmentalist are those who can see no further than the very, very immediate circumstance.

      In this case:
      They assume they have the device.
      They assume said device had no environmental impact.
      They assume that because paper is made from plant fiber, it's bad.
      They assume that the use of paper notes -- in toto -- will be worse than the use of technology -- in toto.

      See? Simply. Just don't think past the moment

      Note to the hippy disparagers. The author of
      • This isn't us environmentalists creating hype for this product; it's a company who thinks we're dumb that is. Don't insult us just because a peice of junk is marketed at us; if you're going to do that, then you'd have to call geeks stupid because Windows is marketed to them. That wouldn't be fair either, but neither is your comment.
    • Not to mention all the electricity required to either keep drives spinning so that the data can be readily accessed, or to power systems so that it can be read from whatever media is being used. Not a lot of energy going on to pick up a piece of paper and read it, but it's awfully easy to make a disorganized mess out of it. Not that most people use the full organizational power of their computers anyway.

      Anyway, the whole computers=ecofriendly thing is all wrong. Go ahead and buy your iMac, hippie, you'r

  • Lovely (Score:5, Interesting)

    by comwiz56 ( 447651 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {ziwmoc}> on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:18PM (#10221693) Homepage
    According to the article: 50 pages, tiny, feels cheap, excessive batteries, can't even exit some of the menus. Overall rating = 4/10

    I think I'll pass for now, especially with the £150 (~$270)

    • Re:Lovely (Score:3, Interesting)

      by GreyPoopon ( 411036 )
      excessive batteries

      Yeah, but this comment set of my "dork-o-meter." The dork considered three SR41 (watch size [7.9mm x 3.6mm]) batteries in the pen and two (count them, only two) AAA betteries in the memory unit to be excessive. While I agree with many of his comments, the tone of the article in general was negative from the start, so it was pretty obvious that Gordon was suffering from severe constipation when he reviewed the product. I mean the guy even complained about the "boxy components at the h

      • Using watch batteries makes me think that the purpose of them is to keep some memory ticking in the pen. Adding another AAA would mean that whenever they needed to be changed you'd lose the data you were trying to store, unless they were in seperate compartments. Additionally, rechargable batteries (at least, NiMH types) self-discharge and will be at a low enough voltage to be commonly considered dead after 60 days. Using rechargables in remote controls and long term low drain applications is a misapplicati

  • poster forgot to RTFA (Score:5, Informative)

    by Jason1729 ( 561790 ) on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:19PM (#10221697)
    The reviewer didn't say a digital pen and paper is a bad idea. All the negative comments in the article are aimed at this implementation.

    The build quality is cheap, it's big and bulky, it requires MS Office, etc.

    The reviewer seemed to like what the technology had to offer, this implementation was just junky.

    Jason
    ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
    • The reviewer didn't say a digital pen and paper is a bad idea.
      Maybe not, but I think it is bad idea; what advantage does it offer over using a regular pen and paper?

      I mean, all you end up with is an image of what you wrote (and nevermind handwriting recognition, it simply doesn't work unless you are using a specialized standardized character set like Graffiti), and you can do that with a scanner for a lot less..

      • what advantage does it offer over using a regular pen and paper?

        What advantages do computer filing systems have over paper systems?

        You can your notes for every course you've ever taken with you in your notebook computer...If the prof starts talking about something you remember from 3 semesters ago, you'll can have your original notes from that lecture with you and you can look them up and refer to them during the class you're in.

        You can "lend" your notes to a friend without worrying that you won't ge
  • I ruined the last piece of digital paper I had by using correction fluid to erase my mistakes.

  • It's a caponised PDA! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by argent ( 18001 ) <peter@slashdot . ... t a r o nga.com> on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:22PM (#10221713) Homepage Journal
    You can get smaller, lighter, and easier to use PDAs with a better screen for that kind of money. And they can also serve as handwriting capture devices if that's what you want. If someone had shown me this gadget and asked me to guess how much it cost, I'd have been off by a factor of 10, because it looks comparable to the Palm knock-offs Royal was selling for $50 four years ago... and I'm sure you can buy equivalents for $15-$20 today.

    Yeesh. The problem here isn't that digital note taking as a problem, it's that Pegasus is charging ten times what it's worth (or, alternatively, doing ten times less than they should for the money they charge).
    • You're much kinder than I am. I think the Pegasus Mobile NoteTaker is a complete fricken' joke.

      Unfortunately, it is for real...
      http://pegasustec.en.ec21.com/GC00554976/ CA0055498 7/Mobile_Notetaker.html

  • um, digital pen and paper? been done before.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by admiralfrijole ( 712311 ) on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:28PM (#10221750) Homepage
    The Logitech IO pen [logitech.com] uses a small camera and special paper with faint dots printed on it to record what you have written, then transfer them over bluetooth to your computer, phone, $DEVICE.

    its slick in principle, but clunky, large, and uses expensive paper...
  • What are these technologies?

    /me boggles mind

    hrmm... nothing there...

    Is this a new technology developed and perfected overseas, that is just now landing in North America? What is this thing you call "Pen"? What is this thing called "Paper"?

    • Easy.

      Pen: that thing the cashier lets you use when you pay with a credit card.

      Paper: that colorful junk which you have to move from that box outside your house (a "mailbox") to your trash-can every day.

  • Paperless office... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ImaLamer ( 260199 ) <john.lamar@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:33PM (#10221774) Homepage Journal
    The paperless office will, like privatized Social Security, never happen.

    Not that it can't work, it just won't happen. Many years ago Xerox was hearing this new "buzzword" paperless office so much they decided to do something. They took a bunch of guys and sent them down to Palo Alto and told them to come back with this paperless office.

    Well, they went down there and developed a number of things, Ethernet and GUI's being among the new things, and brought it back to show their bosses.

    Once the head guys saw it they said: "No one will use this!".

    Of course they were partly wrong, but partly right. Of course we use GUI's and Ethernet, but still no paperless office. And that "Office of the Future" was developed in 1970. 34 years later and we have no paperless office.

    Why? It isn't feasible. As more computers go into the office, it seems to me that more paperwork is needed... just to take care of those computers.

    Electronics are "earth friendly" either, so that isn't a good reason to ditch paper and pen. Trees for pencils and paper are usually grown on farms or their replacements planted immediately -- not so easy to replace the heavy metals sometimes used in electronics.

    Plus... dumping paper in China isn't likely to kill their citizens like computer equipment dumped there does. (But as long as China takes the check for dumping services, that is partly their fault)
    • Electronics are "earth friendly"

      should read

      Electronics aren't "earth friendly"

      Sorry to correct myself, I swear I previewed... I guess if it looks right the first 3 times you look once more doen't help.
    • Why? It isn't feasible. As more computers go into the office, it seems to me that more paperwork is needed... just to take care of those computers.

      It's very feasable. It just requires discipline, enforcement, totally outsourced printing, and a method to read that's as strain-free as plain paper.

      In 10 years, once we have electronic paper tablets, we'll probably see the paperless office become "practicable." And from there, it'll rise or fall on its own meirts and the basis of its filing system.
    • It may take a long time (or forever) to go paperless, but it is possible to reduce the amount of paper if the technologies are convenient to use.

      I've been on a campaign to reduce the amount of paper that people give me, and it seems to be working well. The problem that I have with paper is that when I set it down, it just sits there. If I close an electronic file it's still available in its original location, rather than sitting somewhere in a pile of stuff on my desk (though I've been known to have some
      • Have you ever used TeX/LaTeX for equations?
        • Have you ever used TeX/LaTeX for equations?

          Can't stand them. (yeah, all the astronomers I know are going to come and kill me now, but I think most of them know my aversion)

          For note taking they're not as fast as pencil and paper, and I really prefer to read equations in the normal 2-D equation format. I've used them occasionally for papers.

          When a friend was writing her thesis, she was going nuts trying to lay out large numbers of enormous equations in LaTex. She shelled out for Expressionist, which ca

    • Re:Paperless office... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Saeger ( 456549 ) <farrellj@nosPAM.gmail.com> on Saturday September 11, 2004 @03:29PM (#10222103) Homepage
      Trees for pencils and paper are usually grown on farms or their replacements planted immediately

      Indeed. And the dirty little secret is that paper recycling is actually WORSE for the environment than harvesting newgrowth, but nobody wants to believe that in the face of the facts (which I haven't linked to here). In fact, about the only thing worth recycling, in terms of saving both energy and environment, is aluminum. Once oil gets too expensive to extract, plastic can join that list too.

      So, if you want to *be* "earth friendly", instead of *feeling* earth-friendly, throw away everything except your cans (at least until we can recycle 100% of everything with molecular reassembly).

      --

      • Re:Paperless office... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by rtaylor ( 70602 ) on Saturday September 11, 2004 @05:17PM (#10222621) Homepage
        And the dirty little secret is that paper recycling is actually WORSE for the environment than harvesting newgrowth, but nobody wants to believe that in the face of the facts (which I haven't linked to here).

        I would love to see them. I know that the local recycling program for paper saves about $60 per ton over standard disposal techniques despite having higher expenses. The reason is that recyclers are buying up the paper for more than the difference in costs (landfill vs. recycling program -- sorting for recycling is not cheap).

        I suppose my question would be why are they buying used paper for the purpose of recycling it, when they could simply get regular ol' trees?

        Somewhere along the line there is must be a significant energy or manpower expense.

        I would place my bets that the studies you did not refer to don't include the full trail -- like shipping of the materials hundreds of kilometers.
        • Penn & Teller - Bullshit [tvtome.com]

          Season 2, Episode 5 (#18 on the above linked page) - Recycling

          Available on your p2p network of choice.
          • From a brief read, this show seems to be heavily based on the "8 myths of recycling" document.

            The cost issue, for the city of Toronto (Canada), for paper recycling is far below our landfill disposal costs -- due mostly to having a higher recovery rate than the "Myths" document indicates.

            Toronto's (2.5Million canadians) net expenses for landfill are approx $87CDN per ton and blue boxes (basic recycling) is around $54CDN per ton in 1998. In 2004, it's $117 per ton for landfill, and $195 per ton recycling wi
            • Not to say that I don't believe you, but do you have a source for these numbers? I'm in Hamilton, so I would imagine the situation in my city to be just about the same.
              • Sure.. I grabbed them from recent news published after a Kerry's remarks about closing the border. Unfortunately, they're now "for pay" articles at Globe and Mail (around $5) (Try Google news)

                This link [fims.uwo.ca] shows the garbage collection fee and "average" recycling costs. The $135 per ton (after recovery) is an average of the paper and metals (which is about $85 per ton) through to the recent introduction of organics (composting) at around $200 per ton.

                You best bet is to call or email someone from Jane Pitfield
        • As far as I can tell, one thing you can bank on is that a person who will make a sort of black and white, blanket statement about certain things (i.e. paper recycling is worse for the environment than harvesting new growth) is guaranteed to be a person who doesn't know shit about it. Some people are incapable of discerning the differnece between a political, rhetorical argument and a rational, scientific one. Do I know shit about it? A little - a past job was research as a chemist into alternative materi
    • I agree that an office without paper will never happen. But offices today use far more paper than is needed

      I work in an office that decided that they wanted to do "paperless" faxes a few years ago. Their solution was to receive faxes on paper, scan them into the computer, and then shred the paper copies. A realistic goal would be to eliminate that kind of egregious waste of paper -- not to eliminate paper entirely.

      This kind of device is going about it all wrong. We should not be trying to replace pos
    • I never use paper. I AM in the paperless office (atleast my desk). You will not see large piles of paper on my desk. infact if there is paper on my desk, it's because one the follwing has happened:
      • I need to test the print CSS file on a website
      • Someone from the 19th century has handed me a printout of a screenshot (which automaticly means it gets the lowest priority from me).
      • Someone insists that I print something out for a meeting, which ends up not being used.

      While most people in my office seem to make

  • Doomed to fail (Score:4, Insightful)

    by InternationalCow ( 681980 ) <[moc.cam] [ta] [lesneetsnaveciruam]> on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:35PM (#10221787) Journal
    For note taking (and book reading, by the way), we humans like something that falls within the realm of experiences that we evolved to deal with. Scratching with a pen on paper, which generates tactile stimuli and visual ones, seems to fit the bill nicely since we all are apt to do this (Post-It notes, anyone?). So, until we have e-paper that can be maltreated just like r-paper (real paper) with an e-pen that can be handled like an r-pen, all digital note taking technologies are going to fail. It should be clear by now that it is almost impossible to mould people into a particular technology. If you don't believe me, then why is you monitor full of post-it notes?
    • What are you talking about? I read all my books (that I am able to anyway) in e-book format. And my monitor isn't full of post-it notes. But even if it were, it's for the extra "screen space" that I can't get by using a computer. A good program that can be used with anything that could take the form of post-it notes without taking up intrusively taking up screen space would be good, but I haven't seen it.

  • Paperless office (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As regards the paperless office, Brown and Duguid's book "The Social Life of Information" [amazon.ca] is very informative in this regard. It points out that there are many features of paper that have yet to be duplicated, let alone surpassed, by current paper replacements. Until we get all of the advantages of paper with none of the current disadvantages, the paperless office is still a distant dream.

  • flying cars? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by t_allardyce ( 48447 ) on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:43PM (#10221833) Journal
    Whats the killer app here? no-one has found a reason yet that a PDA is more useful than some paper, most people who even have PDAs only use them for games really, everyone stores their numbers on their phones and notes on paper. Stick a very easy input system on a phone (as easy as a pen), make it easy and free to send anywhere and people might just do it. a way of writing that feels so good you would rather use it than pen and paper, the recognition doesnt need to be perfect, but instead of converting it right there it could be converted and kept with the original notes - when you want to search for something you search the converted text - some of which will be wrong but hopefully enough to get the keywords, then you read the original handwriting on your very hi-res screen and if you want you can convert it and correct it properly.
    • everyone stores their numbers on their phones and notes on paper

      I don't. I used to carry an address book and then later keep everything on my computer and print my phone numbers out (never stored them in the phone, phones aren't reliable... they have short battery lives, the software is controlled by the cellular company as often as not), kept notes on paper, had a wallet simply bulging with business cards.

      Now I carry a PDA, it's got a thousand memos and contacts, and even if it didn't do anything more t
  • I'd much rather wait the required time for proper digital paper - you know the stuff, they brand it variaously as eInk, and ePaper, and what have you, but it is decidedly different from LCD screens: for a start it uses reflected light like, you know, normal paper.

    It is, very slowly, coming to market. I think sony is releasing [theregister.co.uk] a device that uses it. Okay, it's an eBook reader and still a little on the clunky side (though still as slim as similar device using LCD), but it has the promise to (in the next 5
    • The question is, though, how will input be? The problem with pen-input technology is less about the display, but mostly with the texture of the writing surface. When trying to avoid permament change (scratches) to something reusable, it has always been a dull instrument slipping on a relatively slick surface.

      With paper and pen/pencil, the sharp writing utensil combined with a surface that produces some friction against that pen or pencil provides a much more controllable feel, less prone to accidental sl

  • old idea needs new innovation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mmmmmhotpants ( 800341 ) on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:56PM (#10221899)
    Digital paper and pens will not be practical until you can write a note on your office desk and it can effortlessly and instantly appear on your home kitchen fridge.

    These ideas of ubiquitous computing were postulated over 20 years ago (perhaps by Xerox?) and we are not much closer to making this a reality.

  • Want to see to future of paper? Check out Anoto (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AdamInParadise ( 257888 ) on Saturday September 11, 2004 @02:57PM (#10221904) Homepage
    Here: http://www.anoto.com/ [anoto.com]

    Their concept will blow your mind. Basically the best integration between traditional paper and pens, computers and the Internet.

    Wired (the magazine, not the website) ran an article about them a few years ago. You can read it here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.04/anoto.html ?pg=1&topic=&topic_set= [wired.com]

    Regards,
    AIH
  • I'll stick with a real pen. I'm at the New York City Pen Show [nycpenshow.com] right now.

    Most of my work is via keyboard, PDA entries on a touchscreen, but for taking notes a fountain pen is still the best. A gentle grip, minimal pressure, light weight, I can take notes rapidly and for extended periods with without fatigue.

  • 1) This is pressure sensitive. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have all that great a precision.

    2) Requires Windows XP & Office to be used. That PDA is usable by itself, it doesn't need to be hooked into things to be useful.

    Having said that, if they managed to get it to be used say like for photoshop/gimp/illistrator etc. I suspect this would be a hit with artists. Tablets are nice, however, they don't have the same type of feedback that pen & paper do. Because a lot of artsts I know will draw

  • I just don't get this idea at all. It's been tried a few times - other posters mentioned specifics and I've seen the products as well and imediately lost interest when I figured it out.

    In the article he writes Pegasus thinks they've found a bridging technolgy or something to that effect. I've seen similar writtings in the market spins of other similar products. All I see is someone getting tired of clipping the little reader on their notepad/having to carry around another gizmo/screwing around with inevit

  • The author seems to think this is a neat idea, just a really poor implementation. For the cost, I'd rather not have to carry around a cell, PDA, this thing in my pockets.

    Now a pressure-sensitive bluetooth pen that could store data on a PDA or (gasp!) a cell phone, that's something I'd buy! Imagine just pulling out your pen, jotting some imaginary notes on the wall, chair, arm, etc (assuming ink portion is retractible) and clicking a button to store on your cell as an image. That would be slick.
  • There are a few inventions in this world that were perfect. The wheel, the broom, the light bulb, the pizza cutter. All of these items in my opinion are perfect inventions. You can make these products better by using let's same better filaments in the bulbs or hard steel in the pizza cutter but dramatically changing them does not work.

    The pen and paper is one of these items. It will be here long after my children are gone. The paper may not be made of wood or the pen use ink like today, but humans wi

  • This VPen seems to be the technology in the new Logitech laser mouse put in a bluetooth enabled pen pen shaped thing. There has not been an update in the news or press release area since 2002. http://www.otmtech.com/vpen.asp [otmtech.com]
  • Given some of the comments in the thread thus far, I thought you all might be interested to know that some of us here at the University of Maryland's [umd.edu] HCI lab [umd.edu] have been researching how to embrace the cohabitation of paper and computers. Our philosophy is simple: there are times when paper is better, and there are times when computers are better; why not let users benefit from both without the tedium of transitioning between the two?

    We have been using the Anoto paper with a few of the digital pens (each

  • Never understood the big deal with pen/pencils. Some people seem to think that once you can get the computer to act like a notepad, it will be magically easier to use. I've used Tablet PCs before. They're not all that useful. Most of the time, I just use them as a regular laptops. The whole using the pen thing is cool for about 10 minutes. Other than drawing, I would much rather type. Maybe it's because I started using the computer when I was 8 and am used to typing. Or maybe an improvement GUI woul
    • I wouldn't write a 20 page paper with a pen, but its great for taking notes during meetings/class, jotting down ideas or something. Especially given that its often handy to add a little figure or make arrows.

      I haven't used a tablet PC, but it seems too large and clunky to be useful to me. PDA screen are too small, especially given that you need to write 2-3 times larger on the PDA screen for it to be readable than you would on paper.

      In my opinion, the real killer "ePaper" will be something thats large e
  • ...is the fact that you need a highly specific piece of software to even be able to *use* it.

    And that is: MS Office XP. Let's not fight about MS or !MS, but the idea that you can only use a rather expensive, general-purpose hardware device if you use the latest version of an expensive (and in my eyes, not very useful) software product from another company is simply ridiculous.

    Oh, well.

    Next!
  • Several years ago, Cross (the pen people) had a thing called a CrossPad, which allowed one to write on an ordinary notepad but capture the digital image (or convert handwritten notes to text).

    I must be one of the few people who found this a tremendous piece of hardware, because they discontinued it after a while and the product is no longer supported. But it used a very comfortable pen, and wrote on ordinary notepads. The hardware, I thought, was extremely well done, and I found it a breeze to use.

    T

  • Give me one good sheet of real electronic paper -- like 8.5 x 11 -- without a weighty battery pack hanging off the side -- something that is slightly malleable and can be placed on any semi-hard surface to be written upon. Let me easily fill up the page, touch the bottom corner with my pen to archive it / clear the screen so I can immediately continue writing the next page -- and let me easily virtually "flip" through my pages -- e.g. forward & back navigation (like flipping a real page) and maybe even
  • The things taht I write by hand at work tends to be equations, numbers and formulae. I produce literally lever arch folders full of hand written calcs (with loads of output from analysis programs as well), and I can't see any technology being able to reproduce the speed that I can jot down thoughts / sketches coming around any time soon.

    Plus, I need my calcs to be archivable and readable for at least 70 years (or however long the building remains standing), and it would be a brave man who would put money

  • The IBM TransNote [pencomputing.com] didn't sell well. Anyone here own one?

  • If it can be done with pen and paper-why should we bother to do it electronically?
    If I would want my notes to be available electronically, I would take them on a PDA! But in fact, I don't, because I don't need them on the PC 99% of the time and if I need a particular one I just scan it.
    Everything the device promises can be done with today's means in a similarly effective way. Well, maybe it has some specialty applications that no one knows of...
  • There used to be a product called InkLink, where you clipped a reciever onto the top of a notepad, and wrote with a special pen, and it would be able to transfer everything you wrote into your PDA. (Kinda like NoteTaker) But the website of the manufacturer http://www.siibusinessproducts.com/ doesn't have it listed as a product anymore, but it was in my PDA's user manual as an accessory.

    and TablePC's are pretty cool.

    I think we are getting closer to a "paperless office", just look how much more we use email
  • Number one dumb thing about this is, handwritten notes are not even remotely the issue. I mean, I'm a notepad addict, I admit. Constantly have four or five legal pads going to keep track of things at work. So? Maybe I use half a dozen a month, maybe. Meantime, the office chews through about five times that weekly, pure waste, why? Wasteful printing, people who cannot negotiate an email or a spreadsheet unless it is printed out, people printing stuff and totally forgetting about it so it sits around for
  • I still believe it's achievable. What's needed are rugged displays (not made of glass like LCDs) built into rugged, thin packages that are mostly display, without mechanical stuff that can break (buttons, knobs, slots, etc.). Like the PADDs on Star Trek. We keep getting closer but some of the technology doesn't quite exist yet. Also some good software is needed. Some of what's available for tablet PCs comes close. Of course it ought to be free software, and there should be a reusable library for certa
  • We've printed out so much garbage at our office that we have nearly run out of paper. Voila! The paperless office.

    Seriously, computers have made it so much easier to print, reprint, cut and paste, run off a copy of someone's slideshow full of clip-art, etc. No wonder demand for paper hasn't died out - it is easier than ever to fill a page and print it.

    Typing was hard work - so too writing all those pages by hand. And printed paper lasts longer than floppy disks. Ever seen a "bad sector" message from readi
  • At the risk of being flamed... TABLET PC. If the idea is to reduce paper - to keep electronic copies - wow, is it ever the way to go. I'm a University student and I've just recently got a tablet - being a "mature" student, my experience at the different companies I've worked at (and for which, I've all used laptops) makes the Tablet's abilities overshadow the faster processors or gizmos I've seen in laptops. Over the past academic year (i.e. 8 months), I've accumulated over a bookshelf's (one shelf) wor

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