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Now much as I love my PDA it does have its irritating moments. Like loosing that little pen and having to use the end of a biro. Then there's the having to concentrate on finding those tiny letters or learning Graffiti. Or when the screen has to be 'reset' because it has lost all notion of what my pen is up to!

So you can imagine my pleasure at being introduced to the digital pen when TalkGadgets sent me to meet Edward Belgeonne of Destiny Wireless.

Arriving with an open mind, I was won over within the first 5 minutes. Although they are a little fat - because of all that technology - these pens write just like and weigh the same as an ordinary ballpoint. The on board camera watches and records every pen stroke - taking up to 70 pictures a second. The 'words' can be sent to a PC either through a docking station (much like a PDA) or emailed via a blue tooth phone.

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Imagine sitting on a train going to a meeting with a notepad (specially made to work with the pen) and handwriting an email. Once you've finished you write the email address at the bottom of the paper, tick a box and off the email goes, via your bluetooth mobile to any email address in the world.

When you get to your meeting you take your notes with digital pen and paper. No PDA or laptop as a physical barrier between you and your colleagues. At the end of the day you just place the pen in the docking station and all your handwritten notes are transferred to your PC.

My one niggle on using the software that comes with the basic pen for installation on your own PC is that I could not work out how to send more than one page of handwriting at a time via the PC email application. Other than that it is extremely easy to use

Thanks to hand writing recognition software (additional to the standard start up package) your notes can be translated into text. The recognition software isn't quite 100% but the vendors are working on that.

The real power of this lovely little pen is in its commercial applications. Already the pen, and specially devised forms, are being used by the likes of delivery companies and for sales and service organisations. Because the forms are paper based, the customer can still have a hard copy. The digitised copy is sent over the airways to a central server that translates it to text and stores as XML data streams in a database. For companies this means streamlined processes, drastically reduced costs and ultra fast data collection.

Destiny Wireless distributes a range of pens made by Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Logitech and Hitachi Maxcell. They also provide associated services including specialised forms analysis and production and database design and storage.

For email applications you'll have to budget for the costs of the bluetooth mobile. For other sophisticated applications you'll also have to consider the costs of the handwriting recognition software and form design for example.

However, for the basic user who wants to use the device purely for capturing notes, the starting costs compare favourably with a PDA at between £150 and £200 (plus VAT) for the pen and a monthly charge of £9.99 (plus VAT) for pen services. And unlike many electronic purchases the consumables won't set you back an arm and a leg with a notebook retailing at around £2.

I don't know about you but I'm sold!!!

Link : http://www.destinywireless.co.uk