Why did I chose to write a Lightscribe Echo Smartpen Review? It's pretty simple - when something has such a profound impact on one's life, they feel compelled to tell others about it.
Profound Impact - pretty bold statement I know, so let's explore what I mean by that.
How I Used To Take Notes:
I grew up during the 1970s and 1980s before computers were commonplace in the home or at school. I took notes on a pad of paper using a BIC ink pen or a standard HB pencil. I'm sure many of you remember those days?
I didn't own a home pc until 1996, which I bought in preparation for university - seemed appropriate since I was going to do a computer science degree. Even then though, I still took lecture notes on a pad of paper.
During my placement (intern) year I worked for a research company, and during that time I worked with some voice recognition software, and I have to say it was a complete pain to train. Having somewhat of a northern British accent the software struggled constantly to recognize words. Then, to add insult to injury, you had to train it for hours in multiple environments - a quiet room, a room with background noise like your office, and even outdoors with wind, and outdoors with traffic background... hours and hours of training time, and it was never 100% right.
Needless to say, the novelty interest began to wear off. That was about a decade ago. After that I mostly went back to pen and paper notes, or hauling a laptop with me to meetings and classes to type notes as best as I could keep up.
Then, getting home after class, maybe not until the next day or a week later, trying to pick up those hastily written notes and trying to remember what was being said or what I was thinking when I scribbled something in the margin, or didn't quite get to fish a though on paper before the topic changed and I had to start more notes in a poor effort to keep up with the class... Talk about a pain in the rear!
You might be feeling my pain for note taking by now, I bet most of you have been there and maybe are still there.
How I Take Notes Now:
Back to my claim - the Lightscribe smartpens have had a huge impact on how I work, and more importantly, how effectively I work.
Having a tool like the smartpen that can not only record the words and diagrams you write using the pen, but can also record the audio nearby - the conversations, the speaker in a lecture or classroom is an excellent aid to how you work.
Remember I mentioned how hard it can be to go back to the thought process you had at the time you were taking notes? Well using the smartpen you can go back into your notes and listen to the audio it recorded at the very time you were writing - and it doesn't have to be someone else doing the speaking either.
Often times if I am making notes from a video, a lecture, in meetings, I'll add my own thoughts specifically to aid in remembering the moment when I come back to review, without a doubt this is the biggest benefit I get out of using a smartpen.
