Livescribe Pulse Smart Pen Review

Livescribe Pulse Smartpen Review Andi Barness: Hello and welcome to neo-fight.tv, the technology show for the not so geeky. I’m Andi Barness. Ben Freedman: And I’m Ben Freedman. And today on the show, you know what the bane of my existence is really is meetings, meetings, meetings— Andi Barness: Lots of meetings. Ben Freedman: Lots of meetings and my problem is not that I hate meetings. Do you like meetings? Andi Barness: Yes. Ben Freedman: Do you enjoy meetings? Do you have meetings? Andi Barness: Yes. Ben Freedman: Because my problem is not that I don’t like them, I don’t mind them but from this you have trouble remembering them. So when I go to a client and we’re going to talk about scripting a video or something or whatever we’re doing. My first impulse is not to take any notes but I want to connect, I want to talk, here’s what we’re going to do for you. I want to be like dealing directly with the client so I don’t want to take a lot of notes as I don’t really like to write the whole lot, I’m just not a writer, I’m more of a typer. But then, that even though it’s fresh in my mind an hour later, a couple of hours later I forgot the entire meeting. The next day, the guy calls me back and said, hey what do you say about this, and I forgotten. Andi Barness: Oh boy that’s not good. Ben Freedman: Yes, it’s one of those clients that doesn’t call you back like a month and then says, hey, remember all that stuff we talked about let’s go ahead with that and I’m like—right. So I’ve tried using tape recorders, I’ve tried using my laptop taking notes which I find awkward because I’m trying to talk to a person. Andi Barness: Right. Ben Freedman: I think I’ve found the solution here and I know you like this part as well. Andi Barness: Yes, I think you have to. Ben Freedman: With that lengthy preamble, let me introduce to you, this is the Livescribe—what is it called the Pulse—Livescribe Pulse Smartpen. And it’s a big bulky pen—would you afraid that’s a little bulky as pen? Andi Barness: Yes, I think that’s one of the things that I didn’t like about it was it’s like you’re writing with a marker I think that marker— Ben Freedman: It is and it’s just a regular ballpoint pen and it comes with these special pads of paper which you can get in different sizes. And by the way, this only works with the special paper made by these guys, made by Livescribe. Pulses in the pen, Livescribe dot paper they call it. Andi Barness: Got it. Ben Freedman: And if you take a look at this paper, it is—it does have all kinds of—now you’re not going to see this one here but if you look real close you can see its all kinds of dots on there. So here’s what you do with the meeting, first of all you turn the power and the pen on, it’s on. In the bottom here is a button on the paper, can you see that it’s printed right on the paper-- Andi Barness: On each page-- Ben Freedman: On each page have these controls on the bottom. And what you do is you tap them with the pen. I’m going to tap record and you hear a little beep and now the pen is acting like a audio recorder. It’s recording everything we say and in fact, what I’m going to do is play the audio now from the pen. So now the audio you’re hearing is not from my mics it’s from the pen. And then during your meeting what you do is you take notes like you normally work. So for instance here we are I decided here, I’m going to start talking let’s talk about the pen I just wrote that down and I’m going to pick notes about pen blah, blah, blah, in our meeting. Andi Barness: Okay. Ben Freedman: It’s jumping anytime here. I know I’m kind of going on through this demo but it’s kind of complicated things that are explained right? Andi Barness: Right, you’re doing a great job. Ben Freedman: Well, thank you very much. So that’s that. Now, maybe we’re going to make our next episode. So let’s talk about our next episode. So for the download we’re going to write next episode of neo-fight. There’s the next episode and I’m going to start taking notes. So in our meeting we’re taking notes and you’re telling me stuff and I’m telling you stuff, we’re taking notes. Andi Barness: Let’s talk about what we’re going to order for lunch. Ben Freedman: Okay. So now we’re going to go down here and we’ve talked about the episode and now we’re going to talk about episode and now we’re going to talk about lunch. And I’m going to write down here, lunch order. Andi Barness: Lunch order. Ben Freedman: Lunch order? Andi Barness: Perfect. Ben Freedman: Lunch order? Andi Barness: Yes. Ben Freedman: So now, we’re going to talk about our lunch on our meeting. So every time I’ve come in the meeting to a new topic, I’ve written it down here and I can be taking more notes writing down all of the stuff we talked about. It’s in the meeting and I’m going to hit stop. Okay and now we’re back to our regular audio so you can hear now how loud this on the actual phone. I’m going to put the volume up here. Andi Barness: This is the fun part. Ben Freedman: Right. Andi Barness: This is the main part. Ben Freedman: Now, let’s say it’s a month later and I want to go back to this and I see the notes and you know I have trouble reading my own handwriting as you can tell it’s not great. So maybe I see here, what we talked about the pen? What details were we’re doing in there? All you do is you take the pen you tap it to your notes about what you talked about and I’m going to tap right here. So now maybe, I want to—let’s—I want to skip down, I want to see what do we have for lunch? Just tap on the lunch order. Andi Barness: Or you can take this with you to go get lunch. Ben Freedman: I can take this with me to go get lunch that’s right. Now, I have to take the notebook with me too. Andi Barness: Oh that’s true. Oh no, oh, could you take the other thing that it comes with or no? Ben Freedman: The other thing? Andi Barness: Does that come with something in the front or no? Ben Freedman: It does but I don’t know if this comes with little stick on things for instance you have a card you can—you know, you can stick on your book and such. And it does have a replay thing here but I don’t know how it necessarily knows what page to go to. So you really need—it really works best with the paper. Andi Barness: Okay. Ben Freedman: Because if I just play from here it’s just going to play the whole thing; it’s not going to know the thing that I want to talk about. Andi Barness: That’s true. Ben Freedman: Now, let’s say it’s down the road and all I want to do is find out what do we say about our next episode. Well, all you do is click on the next episode. Andi Barness: Like this is as perfect thing for college students. Ben Freedman: Yes, record your entire meeting but you can instantly jump to the parts that you want to talk about. Andi Barness: Right, great gift idea. Alright, how much are the pads? Ben Freedman: The pads are not as cheap as normal pads. They’re like—for this and maybe have different sizes. Four of these ones I think are about $20.00. Andi Barness: Okay. Ben Freedman: So if you have a starting college students, this is not for your starving college student. Andi Barness: Right. Ben Freedman: Right? Because $5.00 of pad is not cheap, you can get four of these for $5.00. Andi Barness: It’s for the college kids with the rich parents. Ben Freedman: It’s for the college kids with the rich parents. See there’s a little screen on there but— Andi Barness: Yes, and one of the other things I don’t like is you can’t retract the pen. Ben Freedman: Oh that’s a good point-- Andi Barness: But it does come with that keys but-- Ben Freedman: It comes in this case. Andi Barness: I mean that’s a little bulky but-- Ben Freedman: that’s a little bulky but you can restore 100 hours on here transferred to the computer. When you transferred to computer it transfers your audio and your paper. You can see your paper on the screen. Andi Barness: Right. I mean overall, I think this is just the coolest thing. Ben Freedman: This is very, very cool. Andi Barness: And I don’t think it’s that expensive. Ben Freedman: No, $149.00. Andi Barness: Right, pretty good. Ben Freedman: Well, we both agree on this so no fighting here for us today. That’s the Livescribe Pulse Smartpen and dot paper and I think this is my solution to meetings. Andi Barness: Perfect. Ben Freedman: Yes. Andi Barness: And not forgetting our lunch order. Ben Freedman: Exactly. Andi Barness: It sounds good. Ben Freedman: O-h wait we have another segment coming up after this so please stay tuned. And we’re back and in the second spotlight today, we’re going to take a look at this little gadget from a company called TrickleStar. And very, very simply what you do is you plug this into a power in the wall. This I guess plug in to a USB port on your computer and this gets plug into a PowerBar with all of your peripherals like your printer, your display, if you have speakers hooked top-- Andi Barness: Scanner-- Ben Freedman: Anything that’s hooked up to your computer. And basically, what it does is when you turn your computer off it senses that it’s turned off and it cuts the power to all of your other devices. Thereby, making you green and friendly and saving a lot of juice. Andi Barness: I love this. I just want to tell you how I love this. Ben Freedman: Tell me how you love this? Andi Barness: Well, what usually happens at my home is after I’m done on the computer, I leave and my husband sneaks in and turns everything off and then he comes back in and says, why didn’t you turn everything off? Ben Freedman: You have a husband star, you don’t need a TrickleStar. Andi Barness: Exactly. So I know-- Ben Freedman: So this will make him happy. Andi Barness: Totally. And so I know when I turn the computer, I’ll print things and then I’m like—did he turned that off again? So then I have to go and turn everything back on. Ben Freedman: Where this is all about-- Andi Barness: Exactly. So every time I turned the computer on, everything goes on, when I turned it off everything goes off I think this is perfect. Ben Freedman: Okay, my problem with this is that things have standby mode for a reason. So like my monitor, it goes in standby so it’s already consuming weigh less than leaving it on but I don’t—it takes a lot less time than when it’s completely off. For instance my fax machine if I pulled a plug in the fax machine I have to reset the clock-- Andi Barness: You really look at the clock in your fax machine? Ben Freedman: No, my point is it getting like environmentally— Andi Barness: See, you choked up about it. Ben Freedman: I’m choked up, it’s the coffee--environmentally ridiculous. Andi Barness: But don’t you think to save money at home like aren’t you into that-- Ben Freedman: We’re talking about pennies here, pennies-- Andi Barness: Pennies are up. My husband could tell you how many of the pennies— Ben Freedman: One latté a month and you probably cover all your— Andi Barness: See, that’s good enough for me. Ben Freedman: I hate this. I hate it but I just don’t like that I want to control my power, I want to— Andi Barness: Oh boy, I think you have a deeper issues then. Ben Freedman: I turned off the computer, everything else turns off. What if I want to use my speakers for something else? What if I want to have my fax machine? Andi Barness: There are people that used the recyclable bags, they use this and there are people like you. Ben Freedman: I hate all that—recycling? There are people who say that recycling actually takes more power than it saves by recycling, have you ever heard theory? Andi Barness: Yes. I still like this. Ben Freedman: Okay, you still like this? Andi Barness: Yes, it makes my life easier. Ben Freedman: If it makes your husband happier then I you know I definitely—I was wondering if you could like hug this part into this part like this and get some sort of crazy perpetual motion you know. This could like power of the universe forever right there. Andi Barness: Then you’d like it. Ben Freedman: I don’t like it, I’m sorry. I don’t like—I think things have standby power for a reason. I don’t think standby power is evil. Standby power is not evil people get over it. It cost pennies a month. Andi Barness: It makes my life easier and it’s saving—it’s helping save the environment, it’s the least that I can do. Ben Freedman: It’s $25.00. Andi Barness: Totally worth it. Ben Freedman: $25.00, how many months of standby power savings will take to earn back your $25.00? Andi Barness: I’ll let you know on the next episode. Ben Freedman: Well, that’s the TrickleStar, you can go there and get one for your setup. And by the way, it works equally well with—you can get it for your TV so when you turn off your TV, it turns of your amplifier and receiver and TiVo. Andi Barness: DVD-- Ben Freedman: You want your TiVo turned off, right? Andi Barness: Yes, no. Ben Freedman: No. that’s stays on. That’s all we have for today. Tell us what you think, do you like turning off your power yourself like I do and the environment be darned or you like Andi and her husband who needs to save every nickel and-- Andi Barness: Penny—we need to save every penny. Ben Freedman: And would love to spend $25.00 for that privilege. Let us know at www.neo-fight.tv that’s where you can leave us comment. We would like to hear from you. Andi Barness: Take a look at this. Ben Freedman: And if you have another three seconds-- Andi Barness: Take a look at this. Ben Freedman: There you go. Andy Walker: Hey, I’m Andy Walker, I’ve just bought a new computer with Windows Vista on it or maybe but an old XP computer you’ve upgraded? But we’ve just created an amazing new deal which everything you need to know about a new operating system from Microsoft is called Getting Started proving those Vista. In this DVD, there are three sections; one is out of the box. What do you need to do as you soon as you start up Vista. Number two is Vista Essentials; things you need to know everyday to make your computer experienced amazing; anti-virus, security all kinds of new features that Vista offers. 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