Livescribe 8 GB Echo Smartpen

by Livescribe

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 0.5 x 6.2 inches ; 4 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B003RAPAKK
• Item model number: APA-00007
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (208 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #6 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Computer Accessories > Keyboards, Mice & Input Devices > Digital Pens
  • #13 in Electronics > Portable Audio & Video > Digital Voice Recorders
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 14, 2010

Product Description

Size: 8 GB

From the Manufacturer

Take the stress out of tests and meetings with an Echo™ smartpen from Livescribe. Record everything you hear, say and write, while linking your audio recordings to your notes. Quickly replay audio from your Livescribe paper, a computer, or a mobile device – all with a simple tap on your handwritten notes. It's never been easier to take notes and stay organized.

From now until January 31^st 2012 anyone that purchases and registers a Livescribe smartpen will receive a free one-year subscription to Evernote® Premium! Get access to more online storage to easily organize and play back all your Livescribe pencasts on the go.

A pencast is a digital version of your notes
and audio. Pencasts allow you to hear and see your notes exactly as they were captured.

*Redemption code delivered upon smartpen registration. Offer valid through 1/31/2012.

It's never been easier to share notes and audio.

Record and Play Back

Smartpens record everything you write and hear so you’ll never miss a word. Replay your meetings or lectures simply by tapping on your notes¹.

Save, Search and Organize

Livescribe™ Desktop saves your notes and recordings to your computer for fast, easy access to what’s important. Search for words within your notes and find what you need fast.

Send and Share with Livescribe Connect

Easily send notes and audio to people and destinations such as Email², Google Docs™², Facebook, Evernote®, Microsoft® OneNote, Google Sites™², MyLivescribe, your mobile device or your computer³ — all from your paper or Livescribe Desktop!

8GB of Memory: Room for Recordings, Notes, and Applications

Whether you're digitizing your notes and audio, or adding additional smartpen apps you'll need storage space; with 8GB of memory, your smartpen has it. An 8GB smartpen can hold over 800 hours of audio*, 128,000 pages of notes, or hundreds of applications.

Included Smartpen Applications

Your Echo smartpen comes loaded with applications ready to work right out of the box:

• Livescribe Connect Premium: Easily send and share notes and audio to Email, Google Docs™, Facebook, Evernote®, Microsoft® OneNote, Google Sites™, MyLivescribe, your mobile device or your computer

• Quick Record: record audio without using dot paper with just a press of a button

• Quick Calc: Write an addition, subtraction, multiplication or division problem on dot paper and get the answer on your smartpen screen

• Launch Line: launch your favorite app by writing it's name

• Password: protect your recorded paper replay sessions with a 4-digit number

• System Utilities: multiple language support, time, date, storage info, and battery charge

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Customize Your Smartpen with More Apps

Enhance your productivity and learning with additional apps like the American Heritage® English Dictionary or the American Heritage® Spanish Dictionary. Transcribe your handwritten notes into editable text by adding the MyScript for Livescribe application. Learn travel phrases in a foreign language. Get help studying geometry, organic chemistry, or guitar chords. Play games like Blackjack, Hangman, or Sudoku.

You can even use your Echo smartpen as a mouse and turn your dot paper notebooks into an extension of your screen. Mark up slides, presentations, PDFs, documents, and spreadsheets quickly and easily from your dot paper using the Paper Tablet app.

Livescribe Dot Paper

Livescribe dot paper uses regular paper printed with a unique pattern of tiny microdots. This tiny pattern works a lot like a GPS system for your smartpen. It allows a smartpen to capture everything it writes or draws on dot paper.

Livescribe smartpens only work with Livescribe Dot Paper, so we've created a variety of dot paper sizes and types: College-ruled Notebooks, Lined Journals, Blank Journals, Mini Journals, A5-sized Notebooks, Grid Notebooks, Flip Notepads, and Sticky Notes. You can even print your own dot paper for free from within Livescribe Desktop on many printers.

What You Get in the Box

• The Echo smartpen with 8GB of memory
• Livescribe Connect Premium: Includes Connect Basic (Facebook, Evernote, MyLivescribe, your mobile device, and your computer)
  plus additional connectors for Email and Google Docs
• Livescribe Desktop software for Mac or Windows (download)
• 500 MB of personal online storage
• Starter dot paper notebook
• Micro USB Cable
• Interactive Getting Started Guide
• Smartpen Tips and Tricks
• 2 smartpen caps
• 2 ink cartridges

What You Need: System Requirements

• Windows XP® 32-bit SP2 or higher, or Windows® Vista 32 or 64-bit, or Windows® 7
• Intel Mac with Mac OS X® 10.5.5 or higher
• 600MHz CPU or higher
• 300 MB minimum free disk space
• Available USB 2.0 port
• Livescribe Desktop 2.7 for WIndows or Mac OS
• Smartpen firmware version 2.7 or later
• Internet connection

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Total hours of recording time*	200	400	800	800
Livescribe Connect Basic Evernote, Facebook, Microsoft OneNote, MyLivescribe, your mobile device, and your computer	•	•	•	•
Livescribe Connect Premium Includes all Connect Basic connectors plus Email, Google Docs, and Google Sites		•	•	•
Smartpen Portfolio				•
3-D Recording Premium Headset				•
MyScript® for Livescribe Software Converts handwritten notes to digital text				•
Livescribe Desktop software for Mac® or Windows®	•	•	•	•
500 MB of personal online storage	•	•	•	•
Livescribe Starter Paper	•
Livescribe Starter Notebook		•	•	•
Micro USB Cable	•	•	•	•
Rubberized Grip		•	•	•
Ink Cartridges	1	2	2	2
Smartpen Caps	1	2	2	2

*Actual recording time varies by audio quality setting.
¹ Livescribe paper required – don't record without permission
² These connectors are available only with Livescribe Connect Premium
³ Mobile device access requires Pencast Player App or Flash®—enabled web browser

Product Description

Find what you need with a tap. The Echo smartpen from Livescribe records everything you hear, say and write, and links your audio recordings to your notes, so you can find what you need. Packed with useful features, the Echo Smartpen helps you put your notes to work, so they're always accessible. The Echo smartpen records everything you hear and write, so you can find what you need with a simple tap. Ideal for meetings, conferences, or classes, this compact tool is as easy to carry as traditional pen-and-paper, but smarter. Replay your recorded audio anytime, anywhere, with a quick tap on your notes. Save and Search Using the Livescribe Desktop, you can save notes to your computer, which makes it a snap to integrate them into a report or presentation. Search for specific words or phrases within all of your notebooks, organize them they way you want, and export them locally for backup or transfer. Send and Share - Its easy to share your notes or recordings publically or privately as a PDF, audio file, or a pencast. What's a pencast? A pencast is an interactive flash movie of your handwritten notes and audio. You can publish pencasts online, share them privately via email, or post them directly on Facebook. Applications: Customize your smartpen with downloadable apps -from dictionaries to translators, time savers, games and more. As new apps become available, your smartpen evolves with you. What You Get- The Echo smartpen; 8 GB of memory; Livescribe Desktop software for Mac or Windows (download); 500MB of personal online storage; Starter dot paper notebook; Micro USB Cable; Interactive Getting Started Guide; Smartpen Tips & Tricks Guide;2 smartpen caps 2 ink cartridges What You Need Windows XP with SP3 or Windows Vista or Windows 7. Intel-based Mac with Mac OS X 10.5.5 or later, including 10.6 600MHz CPU or higher 300 MB minimum free disk space USB 2.0 port Internet connection for software downloadThe Echo smartpen works only with Livescribe Dot Paper.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

416 of 430 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfecting the nearly perfect, July 20, 2010

By 

G. Ware Cornell Jr. "anotherlawyer" (Weston FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Livescribe 4 GB Echo Smartpen (Personal Computers)

I am a great believer in Livescribe's smartpens. The first offering three years ago Livescribe 2 GB Pulse Smartpen has worked perfectly ever since. It is not exactly svelte, but it had the capacity to record 200 hours of audio and has proved to be an extremely reliable and useful tool for a busy litigation practice.

The Echo is a refinement of the original Pulse. It is slimmer, and doesn't quite look like one of those metal cigar containers. It has twice the memory of my original smartpen. The price has come down over the years significantly making an investment in a smartpen even more attractive.

I use my pen to record initial client interviews as well as depositions. I am able using the Livescribe Desktop software to export a recording to a CD and send it to a client to hear. However the best feature is its "point and play" technology which allows me to listen selectively to a recording on my pen by touching a word in my notes. The audio immediately syncs to the part of the conversation and has a five second "skip back/skip forward" feature to account for slow writers like me. I can also listen later to my notes and add additional points of interest.

Audio fidelity is amazingly good. The pen has settings for different environments like lectures or office meetings. Even if you just use the default settings you will be pleased with the output.

Besides being thinner, the new Echo no longer requires a cradle, and attaches directly to a USB port on your Mac (that's me) or PC.This eliminates one more gadget I need to lug around in my briefcase.

Livescribe's special paper should not intimidate any prospective purchaser. First it is possible to print your own paper. Livescribe suggests that this requires a laser printer, but I have actually done it with an injet. You have to test in any event whether your printer is compatible which is how I learned some inkjet printers will work.

However users will find Livescribe notebooks to be very reasonably priced. I buy Livescribe ANA-00018 Single Lined 100 Page 5-8 Notebook - 4 Pack which makes the cost per notebook very comparable to ordinary spiral notebooks. Clearly Livescribe is refusing to adopt the model of printer manufacturers who make most of their money on supplies.

There are applications available for the Echo including a text recognition app that offers a 30 day free trial. However my handwriting is usually indecipherable even to me so I have never tried it. However the idea is great.

In the universe of Livescribe pens this is probably the one which should command your most serious consideration. 4GB is an an enormous amount of data and recording. I have never come close to filling 2GBs although I do remove recording from the pen from time to time while maintaining the audio on my Livescribe Desktop.

Livescribe has perfected a product that, as a tool for lawyers, for students, for physicians, and salesmen, as well a host of others was nearly perfect.

337 of 350 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Works Well on Windows; Mac Software Sluggish & Handwriting Recognition Add On MyScript Does Not Work Well, August 25, 2010

By 

SanjeevP "Bottom Line" (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Livescribe 4 GB Echo Smartpen (Personal Computers)

Amazing! is the first reaction to this device. Here are the things it can do, and generally well.

1. Write like a regular pen.
2. Record voice or sound like any digital recorder.
3. Link the written notes to the recorded sound. So if tap on a written word it will play the sound recorded at the time that word was written.
4. Upload handwritten notes and voice to computer.
5. Share your written notes and audio (Pencasts).

The sound quality is fairly good. There are lot of add on apps available like games, language translation, piano etc. which I have not used so far except MyScript, which does not work very well. It comes with two fine black ink cartridges, no medium, and I wish there was one included. The writing was faint with fine tip and it was scratchy to write. So I had to order an extra pack of five Livescribe ARA-000007 4 Medium Blue and 1 Fine Red Ink Cartridge cartridges. Sometimes the writing is faint on the computer even with medium tipped blue cartridges.

PROBLEMS

1. BUGGY MAC LIVESCRIBE DESKTOP SOFTWARE: Echo pen does not come with any software, you have to download that from the web site. LiveScribe Desktop for Mac software is very sluggish and glitchy. You will be watching the spinning wheel for a while (3:48 minutes) when it starts, it will keep on asking you for email address and password and not let you use the program until you do. And if you are not connected to the Internet, the LiveScribe won't stop spinning until you connect the Echo pen. Windows software is actually better, faster and does not hang up like that. After you connect the pen, it takes a while for the notes to show up. Although you can archive the notes from one pen to one computer, there is no way to transfer notes to multiple computers because archiving the notes removes them from the pen. The first time I connected the pen, it updated the firmware automatically.

2. DIFFICULT TO PRINT CUSTOM PAPER: Another problem is that you have to buy notebooks and paper from LiveScribe. As far as I can make out, they do not sell A4 size paper. You can print the paper on some Postscript color laser printers. I could not print the paper on Dell 5100cn color laser printer, either with Dell Postscript driver or with Adobe generic Postscript driver but I was successful in printing the paper on Brother MFC-9840CDW Color Laser Multifunction Center with Wireless Interface and Duplex - but only from the Mac LiveScribe. It took a long time - 2 hours - to print 25 pages! Interestingly, the custom notebooks could be printed only in Mac Livescribe, not from the Windows version. The file was 200MB. You have to print one full notebook of 25 pages at time and you cannot print partial notebooks, say pages 1-10. And you can only print total 100 pages (4 Notebooks with 25 pages each). So if you want to use more than hundred pages, you have to archive a notebook before you can do that. That limits active pages to 100 at a time! This is the biggest drawback I found for my purpose because I need to have hundreds of active records at a time where I can write information on multiple days. The same limitation also applies to their notebooks. Despite using 1200 dpi resolution for printing, the quality of writing was still poor when it showed up on the computer. So I ended up using Livescribe Single Subject Spiral Notebook ANA-00017, 4-Pack, Nos. 1-4 which have A4 size paper, but punched.

3. NO EASY WAY TO BACKUP: The data transferred to the computer is saved in one of those obscure and hidden Windows & Mac folders that are hard to find for non techies and will not back up unless you do global backup like Windows Backup or Mac Time Machine. You cannot save your data in custom folders. Even though, I had everything backed up, I could not restore the the data when my hard drive died and lost all archived notes. Three technical support reps from LiveScribe could not restore it. First two said they will call back and let me know but never did. The last technical support rep did get back to me in Email and said they could not restore my backed up data. After losing lot of data (300 A4 pages), I now save all notes as PDF files in my custom data folders and also upload to Evernote. I do not record lot of audio and so far the free Evernote account has been sufficient. Integration of Windows LiveScribe with Evernote works well.

4. POOR HANDWRITING RECOGNITION ADD ON MyScript: My main purpose in buying this pen was to convert handwritten notes to computer text. For that I had to buy a thirty buck add on called MyScript for LiveScribe which does not work so well. Even with clear cursive writing it does not recognize many words and has particular difficulty with technical words, so you have to add each word one by one into the dictionary, and cannot import your Microsoft Word or Pages dictionary. Very tedious process. But it has Auto Replacement, which works like Microsoft Word Autocorrect, e.g. if you write 3m, you can program it to expand to 3 months. That is the work around to poor handwriting recognition.

5. ANNOYING UNTETHERED CAP: Like every one else, I found the loose cap very irritating, it can be easily lost. Are you supposed to keep putting and removing the cap all day long? It is not clear to me why they couldn't make a retractable pen or why the cap cannot be held in place on the back of the pen or tethered with a small cord. There is no clip on the pen to clip it to your pocket either. You will find this very annoying.

6. NO AUTO ON & OFF: If you forget to turn the pen on by pressing the on/off button, the pen will not record anything. I cannot understand why the pen does not have auto on, it should turn on as soon as you start writing on the paper. The on off button should be behind the ink cartridge, so it turns on just by the process of starting to write. Or may be they can fix this with a firmware upgrade.

Overall, it is great for students to record lectures, attorneys, journalists, conference attendees making notes etc. and you can later on refer to the written notes and /or speech. You can write or record speech or do both and link the two. Those who are going to record a lot of audio should go for 8 Gb; for most users 4 Gb should suffice. If you use LiveScribe notebooks and Windows software it works fairly well. But if you have a Mac, need to print your own custom A4 paper, or need handwriting recognition, then it is a work in progress and needs lot of bugs ironed out before it can become a mainstream product. May be they can have a wi-fi card like Eye-Fi so that notes are automatically transferred to your computer. It sure has the potentiel.

138 of 144 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nice Upgrade from the Pulse, July 22, 2010

By 

Karen B Mielke (Maplewood, MN, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Livescribe 8 GB Echo Smartpen (Personal Computers)

I love my Pulse 4GB. This Echo 8GB is just that much nicer - more comfortable to hold, more memory, better uplink connection than the Pulse's standard cradle, which is a little too easy to knock the pen off from. The Pulse's pro cradle (upright) is very nice, though. The new Mac Desktop update (2.2.1) is a very good one, with a much easier interface for sharing pencasts, pdfs, and AAC files. Like the previous reviewer, I had difficulty at first, but ended up manually downloading and installing the latest software update (my software kept telling me I had the latest, but it was 2.1). It replaced my previous version(keeping all the Pulse files intact), and after the quick install, it began to recognize the Echo without any problem.

The new pen cap is little and fits tight - I suspect it will be lost quickly. It is different than the Pulse caps - smaller, and fits on differently. I don't notice much difference at all in using the Echo vs the Pulse, but I do find it more comfortable and less dorky-looking. I never considered 4GB to be too little storage, but 8GB certainly allows me to record everything at the highest quality without concern. Interestingly, this pen didn't come with the recording headphones - which are nice, but way too dorky to actually use. If you are looking to buy a first Smartpen, you really can't go wrong with either the Pulse or the Echo. If you are a student or an attorney or anyone who needs to recall detailed discussion points, you won't be sorry. The variety of notebooks now is fantastic.

Note: EVERY high school and college student with learning disorders involving processing speeds, slow writing, Asperger's Syndrome, or attentional issues should have and use this product. I suspect this will replace "note takers" eventually, as this is FAR less expensive and more effective (see 2008-09 research study from Rochester Institute of Technology).

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