Livescribe 2GB Echo Smartpen

...but the design is a little bit clumsy and the ink runs out fast..Nice copies and the actual software is good..

recording capability is good but hard to write with this grip and the lack of gel ink. If they will launch a new series of gel inks I will start using it.

Bought this on recommendation of a friend. It worked fine for first 6 weeks. Then for some reason it has been refusing to download the full recordings to the computer - while it is on the pen and I can playback on the pen. It happens randomly on a random set of pages - no reason why it does it, and completely unpredictable. 6 months on and I still have a pen which does not work and does what it is meant to do.I tried three different computers to no avail. The helpdesk is useless - they take 5- 7 days gettimng back to you to ask a small query before they can give further advice, most so convoluted ( who writes these things) that I needed to spent an hour working it out - then if that does not work ( which invariably it doesnt) - take another 5-7 days to respond even if you respond immediately and if you do not respond within 5 days they close your help request! It has been infuriating - the pen is there to speed things up and help me in my work - I have now wasted so much time trying to resolve this with still no luck. They acknowledge it is the hardware but have done nothing to resolve it or give me a refund or exchange - I have valuable material I can not download or I lose it. I made three telephone appointments but noone ever called. I asked for a manager to get back to me but they never did - I threatened with leaving a bad review on amazon, and suddenly someone calls me on a non-agreed time and leaves a message for me to call them in the USA. As if I have nothing else to do but chase them and resolve the issue. The USA are known to value customer service, but I have never known it to be this bad. So, now I have a pen that I can no longer empty/save its recordings ( or I lose my recordings as they are only on the pen), yet that is full so I can no longer record new things. I'd also like to add that when downloading, it practically freezes an otherwise speedy mac. For the amount of money paid and the fact you have to buy special pads and refills which are not cheap ( and pen refills go quickly without it telling you to, so it goes very suddenly), you'd expect MUCH, MUCH more. A,so note that the pen is very ' fat' and does take getting used to to write with.In summary, if it works like it does with my friend - brilliant - if it does not linke in my case - all I can say is good luck!

Well, decided to upgrade to the Echo 2Gb from the Pulse 2Gb after much soul searching about putting the funds towards an iPad instead - the 2Gb is fine for me as I'll sync to my PC at least once a week. Reasoned that the precision of taking notes on an iPad appears still to be someway off and involves too many compromises, so stuck with a smart pen. The only reason for the upgrade was I wanted both the smart pen note taking features combined with the tablet feature which is only available with the Echo, more to come on that.The Echo us more comfortable to hold and is lighter than the Pulse, the Pulse feeling fatter and less natural. The display looks a little bigger on the Pulse and because of this is a little less discrete. The standard USB adapter on the Echo is more convenient than the old cradle but does mean that you have to be careful where you rest the pen whilst charging to make sure it doesn't get damaged.The pen appears to function as well as the Pulse, with no noticeable improvement of degradation.The use of the pen as a tablet pointer is however limited in comparison to dedicated devices I've used such as the Papershow products  Papershow Starter Kit  . The purpose of these types of applications are that they allowing you to annotate presentations and run whiteboard sessions during web conferences, something I've begun to do more off. The precision of the Livescribe tablet app is just about acceptable but it does appear to sometimes put lines where I've not drawn and not put lines where I have drawn them on the paper. I'm a little disappointed in this but will still use it over starting up my old Windows XP Tablet PC which takes for ever for get started.In summary if you think you'd get value from having your notes always available and don't want the hassle of a scanner and want more precision than the current iPad offerings, the Livescribe is a good choice especially if you want to record the commentary. If you're main use is to run web conferences and you don't want to invest in tablet PC and want the precision of pen then I'd look at Papershow. If like me you want both and don't want to carry both Livescribe and Papershow around with you then my current thinking is comprise and go with the Livescribe.