Anyone use a Livescribe pen?

[Quattro Pete]

Anyone has any experience with this? Wife was thinking of getting one... she's starting a new job soon which will require her to absorb a lot of knowledge quickly, so she wanted something inconspicuous to help her record audio during meetings while she's taking notes.

Most reviews on Amazon are positive, but the pen itself is very bulky. Seems a bit awkward to actually write with. Besides, if you want the pen to also record your writing, you need to use their special paper and special ink which adds on-going cost. It all seems a bit cumbersome, and the pen itself due to its size is not exactly inconspicuous, but I'm curious to hear your opinions.

I told her to just get a more basic pen recorder that looks more like a regular pen, but I can't really find one that's as well reviewed as the Livescribe one...

 

[Loobed]

Some girl in my Calculus class had something like that, but I don't know if it was a Livescribe. It was a pen with a recorder that was used with a special type of paper. The paper had some type of magnetic encoding so as you wrote notes it would know the audio at that point. If you wanted to here what was said at a particular point, you put the pen over the area where the notes were written and click the audio on the pen. You could then hear what was said. The paper is expensive.


I use, and like, the Olympus DS-40. I bought it for under $100 on sale at Staples. It has a very sensitive microphone for picking up a speakers voice from the back of a large room (think 200+ capacity college lecture hall). It puts a type of date and time stamp on the recording. When the professor starts a new problem on the board, or a new section I look at either my watch or the time on the DS-40 and write it on the notepad. If I want to know what the professor said at that time, I go to the DS-40 software on my computer, and click on that date and time, and listen to what was said. The DS-40 works with the newer rechargeable batteries. I think I can get 10+ hours from 2 AAA rechargeable batteries (2 classes, 2 times a week). Alkaline batteries last longer. I bought mine about 1.5 years ago. I don't think it is still being made.

http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_archived_product_details.asp?fl=&id=1277