Dane-Elec DA-DP1-01GC5-R Z-PEN Wireless USB Digital Pen
by DANE ELECTRONICS
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Our Price: $49.99 Availability: Usually ships in 3-4 business days Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Dane-Elec DA-DP1-01GC5-R Z-PEN Wireless USB Digital Pen
Customer Review: Sortta cool, but Finicky
Summary: 3 Stars
Practically speaking, this is a one or two star product. I gave them 3 stars because it is a product in a quite new market with a reasonable price. If you think it's a cool toy, buy it. If you need it to do serious work next week, don't buy it.
Here's the quick summary:
BOTTOM LINE:
The product is basically good, but the tendency of the receiver to drop information is a fatal flaw to practical use. The conditions under which information gets lost are detailed below.
PRO:
Good feature set. Good price point. Comes with lots of nice software stored conveniently on the receiver/flash drive. Writes on any paper. Uses common ink cartridges (and batteries, sort of - see below). MyScript notes software does surprisingly well at handwriting-to-text conversion.
CON:
Receiver is finicky; it can drop entire recording sessions, or parts of a page, even though the activity LED is flashing correctly. Top 20% of page is usually not recorded at all. Page turning is cumbersome. Careful placement of the receiver is important. Pen component is cheaply made. No off switch (so you need to remove batteries to save power). Resolution can be poor, especially near the bottom of a page. Limited number of output formats, and saved PDFs are not efficient (they are bigger than equivalent SVG files containing the pen lines).
In more detail:
I was pleased that the pen and software were easy to set up and use. I was also pleased that the pen viewer supports Linux and Mac, that MyScript Notes software was easy to register, and that MyScript works nicely, and sufficiently quickly, in VMWare Fusion Windows running on my first gen MacBook Pro. I was also pleased that the pen does what it says it does: it digitized my first few handwriting samples. Yay!
I was not pleased with the pen itself. I am sort of a pen snob, and usually write with a Namiki fountain pen. This pen feels like cheap plastic junk, and writes like the free ballpoints you get at conventions. To be fair, my Namiki and the zPen have about the same price, and the Namiki doesn't do any digital tricks (but oh man does it ever write nice!). One nice thing about the pen is that it takes common refills of the sort used by most multifunction pens, and some of these are pretty nice for ball points. Pilot PhD Multi refills and Fischer pressurized "universal" refills both fit, and write better than the included refill.
As a previous reviewer mentioned, there is no off switch on the pen, and so once you take out the little plastic isolator, it may drain your watch batteries in a hurry. This is annoying, but not fatal, since you can pull one of the batteries out and store it in the receiver cap to save power. Also, although I was not able to find the included GP393 batteries in my local store, I found that size 13 "zinc/air" hearing aid batteries fit, and work, just fine. I got an 8-pack of these at my local CVS pharmacy for $6. I live Bozeman MT (USA), which is certainly no shopping paradise, so when I can find what I need at the drug store across the street, I call that "easy to find". The receiver has an onboard rechargeable battery that charges via USB. Annoyingly, it will only charge when connected to a computer, so you can't use an AC->USB adapter (for example the Palm, Griffin, or Apple models) to charge it.
I tested the pen in a number of configurations. I quickly found out that there is a very large "dead zone" near the receiver. The manual says that within 1 inch of the receiver signal quality may be poor. I beg to differ. Within 4 inches of the receiver, signal quality may be entirely absent. I tried drawing a grid of lines on many types of paper, and almost every time the digitized result had a 3"-4" hemi-circle of missing lines centered on the receiver. I got my best results using an A5 notebook, and rather than clipping the receiver to the book, I just set it about 3 inches above the top of the page, at the same horizontal level (stacking it on top of my iPod touch worked well :). When writing this way, though, be careful not to move the notebook!
I did my best to have very careful handwriting, but I shouldn't have tried so hard. The resolution of the digitizer is not that great, and it gets worse farther from the receiver. By the bottom line of my notebook, my digital text looks like it was written by a guy with Parkinson's disease, even though the ink text looks fine. In the end I decided that, on an 8.5x11 college ruled pad (with the receiver set at the top of the pad), I could start writing 3.5" from the top, stop writing 2" from the bottom, and the intervening text digitized OK. Be careful that the receiver is oriented in exactly the same horizontal plane as your paper, or it won't work.
Well, except when it didn't record at all. I have had half a dozen experiences where I turn the receiver on, it flashes, then becomes steady as normal, I write, and the "pen down" LED turns on and off as normal, and then when I plug the receiver into the computer, there is a blank note file, and all my writing is lost.
Changing pages requires compressing the spring clip on the receiver. This seems to work OK, but you have to remember to do it, even though you can't have actually clipped the receiver to your paper if you expect the digitizer to work.
Be careful of your hand posture. If you grip too low, curl your hand around, or put your weak hand above the pen, it will block the digitizer.
Basically, all these constraints make the process of hand-writing a lot less pretty, and I feel like I should just type. There is, however, one redeeming merit: MyScript Notes. I hate Windows-only software on principal, and I don't tend to like non-open-source ware either. Despite this, I think MyScript is a fine program. It isn't perfect, especially if you have small writing, sloppy writing, writing with an unusual stroke sequence, or too little separation between words. However, if you write carefully, it can be 95% accurate in converting cursive script to digital text. That's a hard problem, and having usable accuracy at it is a major achievement. Kudos to MyScript.
Note that MyScript does care about the order of pen strokes. I can get a nice SVG file by tracing (e.g. with Illustrator or InkScape) a scan of a page, but this can't be recognized. For one thing, the SVG format MyScript understands is the Anoto format, and tracing with InkScape doesn't generate compliant SVG, but even if you convert it, without the correct stroke order, recognition doesn't work.
Anyway, I've now written a few dozen pages of fiction with the zPen, and put them in my computer. I can definitely go faster by writing normal ink with my Namiki and transcribing later with my keyboard, but it was a cool experience to see my writing turn into ascii automatically, hence the 3 stars.
I haven't tested an Anoto technology pen (eg the LiveScribe Pulse), but I bet they are much more reliable and accurate. If you really need the thing to work on demand, I'd try that solution, and just live with buying special paper. Alternately, go old school and use real live ink. If you do that, I suggest unlined Moleskin softcover notebooks and a Namiki Vanishing Point fountain pen running J Herbin ink. There's nothing in the digital wold that compares. Oh, and when you transcribe, use a dvorak layout keyboard :)
Customer Review: Dane Electric Digital Pen
Summary: 3 Stars
I have been anticipating this product for about a year, so I was probably set up for the mild disappointment I experienced when it arrived. The early user review I read was almost certainly a plant since it pretty much was a rewording of the promotional materials preceding the product's release. For sure, the pen is pretty "cool" and quite a conversation piece, but there are a few drawbacks that are evident to me.
First, you have to hunt around for the electronic documentation since there are no printed instructions at all. That's not impossible, but somewhat annoying, especially when the documentation you do find is not all that clear. With a little time it can all be figured out, but it's certainly not plug and play out of the box. That brings us to the second issue, actually using it.
Very often the "recorder" doesn't start when the pen starts to move, so the resulting image (words or hand drawn graphics) has a lot of blank or missing parts. Slowing down a great deal helps a little, but still there are quite a few gaps. And slowing down to check the little light while taking notes during a presentation defeats the purpose of the thing anyway.
Finally, the resulting proprietary file which can only be exported through the cumbersome pdf format rather than the easily and widely used jpg format is very inconvenient. And the character recognition is actually sort of humorous in its inaccuracies. I suppose if I took the time to carefully print each number and letter the accuracy would improve, but again, that's not notetaking as it is usually performed.
I guess it's amazing that the thing works at all, but it's still just a little disappointing. I'll hang on to it because it's fun to have and show people, but it's probably easier just to scan the notes.
Customer Review: NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME!
Summary: 3 Stars
December 15, 2008
The Zpen itself works as claimed. However there are some difficult problems with its functionality.
The US Customer Service Address (Phone & Internet) is not functional.
The Manual ( in PDF format) lacks some essential information
When accessing `HELP' or other Manual functions the default is French language
Forget about contacting the French Headquarters, they don't respond to requests for help
When using the Pen Receiver, it is necessary to orient the Receiver correctly.
When using the Pen Receiver, clipping the Receiver to a clipboard with a thick paper pad will block the Receiver from receiving the signal from the Pen
The Mini Pen requires either very sharp finger nails or a tool such as needle nose pliers to replace the Pen
Where does one find replacement Pen inserts in the US? The US office is Offline so no help there!
You pays your $$ and you takes your chances!
Zpen has been around for a while, but in my opinion still not ready for Prime Time
& Oh Yes, I am using mine, its better than nothing, but not by very much
At $89.00 its a little expensive for what it delivers
Good Luck
Customer Review: Z Pen
Summary: 3 Stars
The pen works as advertised. Right out of the box, I got it to recognize a simple sentence. It seems to have trouble when I write less neatly. You can't go back and fix up an error, it gets confused.
The product is not going to win any awards for text conversion, but for those of us who misplace our notes, it serves a need. Both Dane-Elec and the people who make MyScript Notes are helpful. When I asked, Vision Objects gave me a free upgrade to their MyScript software. Dane-Elec sent me a link to upgrade PenInkViewer. Their Note Search software is still in beta and I won't pass judgment at this time. - In all I am happy, but if you use a scanner religiously, it might work better for you.
Customer Review: Works but needs a lot of manual corrections
Summary: 3 Stars
The unit is easy to use and it takes a little time to figure out the software but not hard to do that. I have messy handwriting and I print in capital letters. When I convert my written text and graphs into a word document I have to spend some time editing the mistakes from the conversion. It does save some time doing this but not a lot of time vs. typing my notes into a word document without using this tool. I recommend using line paper to write your notes and use the lines to help guide the size of the graphics for consistency. The equipment and software is very basic but I did not pay a lot for this product. I will update this review after I spend more time with this product.