More gadgets

Yesterday, on the train from London, I was using my C -Pen to help me read the SZ I had picked up on the airplane.

(You don't know? It's like a fat pen with an LCD. But it's a scanner. Scan in a German word and the LCD will show the English equivalent from its onboard dictionary.)

Two people sitting near me took a great interest.

The conversation moved on to other gadgets: my TabletPC, my Palm, voice recognition software and Digimemo.

l had ordered the new, A4-sized, Digimemo whilst I was in Germany but had it delivered to the Uk.

Today I set it up. Works fine.

Ok, so why did I buy a TabletPC and a Digimemo?

Well, several reasons:

• TPCs are convenient when I'm lounging around and can't be bothered (read arsed to use a keyboard. I'm handwriting this entry on the TPC).
• Sometime it's much better to use a PC in slate mode, eg. when sitting in an airport.
• Digimemos, on the otherhand, are pretty discrete. Very few people even realise that it's more than a normal notepad.
• For most notes I will probably never look at them again. I certainly don't need handwriting recognition software to transcribe them into computer text. But the act of writing down the information is the important thing; it impinges the information in the mind. So all l need is a backup just in case I ever do need to refer to them again.
• TPCs may just become the next big thing so having experience in this area is not a bad idea (for me).

Michael Hyatt's excellent Working Smart blog also has a good criticism of TPCs.

Unfortunately I guess he wasn't working smartly enough as he feels he can no longer continue updating that blog.
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