Pens are still an essential business tool to have these days - they’re pretty handy when you need to jot down something quickly and don’t happen to have a computer or notebook to fire up Notepad in time. In addition, pens are still the main method of getting your John Hancock down in legal documents, although there are certain companies that use fingerprint readers to take the next step. The Zpen from Dane-Elec brings a new dimension to the humble pen by elevating handwritten notes to the digital age. This is a wireless digital pen that is able to transfer handwritten notes as well as drawings over to a computer within seconds, doing away with the need to scan a piece of paper.

The Zpen comes with a tiny clip-on receiver, and whenever you write on any kind of paper, you will then upload the handwritten notes onto the computer without any problem whatsoever. This digitally converted text can then be viewed and edited on the screen itself through a special software, which is pretty cool IMHO. I wonder just how good it is at recognizing the billions of different handwriting from different people all over the world? The clip-on receiver works by recording the Zpen’s movement accurately through infrared and digitally modulated acoustic signals which are then transmitted from the Zpen and stored on the receiver’s integrated flash memory. Heck, the Zpen even comes with a built-in Intelligent Character Recognition software that makes transfer to word processing documents a snap, but like I mentioned earlier, just how accurate is this thing? Folks like me who love to scrawl will probably end up more frustrated than helped.

Features include a keyword search, user profile creation, a personal dictionary and 15 language options to get you started. The Zpen from Dane-Elec can be purchased for £99.99 a pop.

Source: BIOS