IOGEAR claims this is the “first device ever to capture natural handwriting from any surface, and store it in the receiver for future use” but I believe that about as far as I can throw my gigantic 21” Wacom Cintiq display tablet. That thing weighs a metric ton and is connected by a cable suitable for a boat anchor, so trust me, it’s not very far.

EPOS / DaneElec Z-Pen is another recent example, but from what I've heard on the GottaBeMobile forums discussion of digital pen solutions, people have had trouble actually getting their hands on one of those. So maybe this is the "first one that you can actually buy as a consumer, since the CrossPad, which didn't actually store stuff in the pen but kind-of gave the same user experience." That doesn't sound quite a slick in the marketing brochure though, I'm sure.

The IOGEAR web site is pretty thin on any technical detail as to how this thing actually works, but according to another story the Mobile Digital Scribe is tracked via an infrared sensor. I also found no mention of the critical detail of how the pen knows that you’ve flipped to a new page of notes. Pens based on the Anoto technology employ a special paper encoded with a unique identifier so that the computer knows which page you’re writing on.

Don’t sell the page-identification feature of the Anoto technology short. It is essential for trouble-free note taking.

On the old CrossPad, for example, you had to press forward/back page buttons, and if you forgot to press the button, or made a mistake somewhere along the way, all of your notes henceforth until you sync’ed with the computer would be seriously messed up, with pages mixed together willy-nilly. I would bet good money that the IOGEAR device has this same problem. If they've figured out a way to solve that without special paper, then I will be first in line to plunk down my hard-earned cash for this thing, but I rather doubt that's the case.

To me trouble-free note taking is well worth the price of special paper. Without special paper, I just don’t see any way to solve this issue, technically. If you have to stop and tap madly on some page turning button or whatever every time you want to flip back a few pages in your notes to make a quick correction, it will quickly drive you insane. I did this in the old days on my CrossPad, and look what happened to me. You have been warned!

The IOGEAR Mobile Digital Scribe does come with software to download your strokes, convert handwriting to text, and also seems to have a real-time streaming mode if you use it while it is connected to your computer. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there is some way to set it up to get the stroke data into OneNote, but it doesn’t appear to have the nice integration that the Capturx does.