Livescribe Pulse Smart Pen for taking notes?

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shaggybill

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I've used one through all of gen chem. I found it very useful for recording the lectures. That feature alone makes it worth it by it self. The paper reply is nice for reviewing at home. I've had some problems keeping the pen synched to my library other than that no problems. The paper can last a long time as long as you write small. Next fall I will be using it for gen bio which I think will be very useful for. I'd say if you have some extra money you should buy it. I think its a great tool.
 
It looks sick. I never knew about it. Thanks for pointing it out. I might hopefully consider using it in the medical school.
 
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A friends of mine uses it and loves it. Its a lil pricey, you could prob get a nice digital recorded for the same price.

In the last bio class I took, I recorded everything on on word on my mac (love macs) and they were synced up and everything. Its awesome for when you zone out!
 
Well, I do something easier: I just use my phone. It can clearly record lectures from ~30 ft away from the professor and on top of that, when I bring it home, I can use speech to text to transcribe it and just go over the iffy parts. Or, if I want to study with it, I just usually transcribe the notes myself.
 
rsm5s said:
A friends of mine uses it and loves it. Its a lil pricey, you could prob get a nice digital recorded for the same price.

In the last bio class I took, I recorded everything on on word on my mac (love macs) and they were synced up and everything. Its awesome for when you zone out!
Click to expand...

how do you do that and sync it on a mac? I just got a mac and i'm still not very good at using all the cool stuff on it.
 
I had a friend that had it and used it for his O-chem notes. The thing is amazing, once you have the recording it's like you're in the classroom.

Personally I think it's better for if you missed the lecture, but it can be helpful if you have a prof who doesn't lecture well and is hard to understand (or if your class is at 8 AM and you can't focus properly). In that type of situation, the pen would be priceless.
 
ive been looking at this but then pen looks massive and its a lot of cash
 
I'm thinking about buying one, but it sucks because you have to buy there paper to write on..
 
I got one of these as a gift and here is what I can say about it:


It is not something I EVER would have purchased on my own...just doesn't seem that useful, however, i think i'm going to end up using for at least some of my classes.

The BEST FEATURE is the ability to transfer all your hand written notes and diagrams from lecture onto you computer through this pen. Once you have it uploaded on the computer, you can share it, divide things into different subjects, and you can even use a search function to look for a certain topic
 
Looks interesting, but I reckon it would be cheaper to use an existing MP3 player device to record lectures, and use a digicam to take photos of your notes if you ever wanted it on your computer.

Like the poster said above, I don't think I would buy this on my own.
 
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Omni said:
Well, I do something easier: I just use my phone. It can clearly record lectures from ~30 ft away from the professor and on top of that, when I bring it home, I can use speech to text to transcribe it and just go over the iffy parts. Or, if I want to study with it, I just usually transcribe the notes myself.
Click to expand...

what phone?
 
mk88 said:
how do you do that and sync it on a mac? I just got a mac and i'm still not very good at using all the cool stuff on it.
Click to expand...

In Mac Word, open a Notebook document instead of a standard Word document. View-->Toolbar-->Audio Notes. It will sync up every couple lines. The mic is not the most powerful and if you type hard it might over power your prof-but a nice feature!
 
shaggybill said:
Has anybody tried this pen for taking notes? It looks pretty cool, but I can't decide if it's usefulness would be worth the $180.

http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/learning/the_month_of_january_iap/livescribes_pulse_pen.shtml
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I've been considering getting one but I'm not entirely sure I can bring myself to spending that much money on a pen that records audio ... I mean I need to buy a new laptop as well and chances are I can record class lectures just fine on whatever I end up buying ... so I'm not entirely sure it'll be worth the purchase.
 
This pen does look really cool, but what about classes w/ powerpoint lectures? A lot of my undergrad classes had powerpoint notes we could print off, and almost everyone just took notes on the slide printouts, which clearly wouldn't be compatible with this pen.

For current med students- do a lot of classes have powerpoint notes? If so, I'll probably just stick with taking notes on the slide printouts and recording lectures with a digital recorder if necessary.
 
rsm5s said:
In Mac Word, open a Notebook document instead of a standard Word document. View-->Toolbar-->Audio Notes. It will sync up every couple lines. The mic is not the most powerful and if you type hard it might over power your prof-but a nice feature!
Click to expand...


DAMN IT, If I had known about this I would have not bought that smart pen.. DAMN YOU IMPULSE SHOPPER
 
So my friend got one for Christmas last year and being in all my classes with her this is what I saw/heard about this pen.

PROS: It's a really nice pen, has a lot of features, and the special notebook paper allows you to hear the lecture from any point in your notes (which is a BIG plus in my opinion). It helped my friend out A LOT when she was studying for biochem. She relistened to all her lectures and took extensive notes added onto what she had already taken.

CONS: I noticed ever since my friend got her pen, she started slacking off in taking notes in class. Heck, even I did! I would just think "oh the pen's got it!" Problem with that is you don't absorb the material during the lecture, and are scrambling to remember later what it was that was so important. I stopped relying on the pen a month into the semester, but my friend didn't. I noticed that she studied a LOT more for her classes than me, with similar/less results. Sounds like a pain to me. And also, the pen is pretty bulky and she had problems writing with it 3 classes in a row.

Seeing her with it, I probably would never spend the money on it.
 
For those of y'all that are doing everything on your computers, make sure you back things up very frequently. Even on a Mac. My fiance's 1.5 year old MacBook died in the middle of a huge project he was working on (hard drive failure) and the whole project was lost. It really sucked for us so I don't want it to happen to anyone else.
 
I thought about it a few months back when I saw the commercial for it featuring the Krebs Cycle. However, I decided not to. Losing a $180 pen is like stabbing yourself in the foot. Also, the notebooks have to be specially purchased, which to me is a scam. Instead, tape recorder if you must. Losing one tape is like $1, and it's not like you need to cross-link audio to notes that often... is it?
 
bunnity said:
For those of y'all that are doing everything on your computers, make sure you back things up very frequently. Even on a Mac. My fiance's 1.5 year old MacBook died in the middle of a huge project he was working on (hard drive failure) and the whole project was lost. It really sucked for us so I don't want it to happen to anyone else.
Click to expand...


Agreed, def. invest in one of the external hard drives. Very Very important
 
i bet the matrix-dot notebooks are pretty expensive

i go through a TON of paper every year. no way i'm absorbing that cost for this pen.
 
halekulani said:
i bet the matrix-dot notebooks are pretty expensive

i go through a TON of paper every year. no way i'm absorbing that cost for this pen.
Click to expand...

They are. I do believe that the last time I considered them, I noticed that you could only store 4 notebooks in memory at a time. Meaning that if you had a 5th book, you'd be hard-pressed backing up your X notebook for the Y notebook.
 
best investment is my lenovo tablet, one note and a usb omnidirectional microphone. with the mic i can record a whisper at 30 feet. i record and take notes directly into one note. everything is synched so when i click on a particular note it goes right to that part of the recorded lecture.

BTW.. one note will be included in the upcoming release of office 2010.
 
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