ACECAD DigiMemo

December 22, 2007 12:07 PM

I'm looking for an A4 sized combination digital notepad and graphics tablet, ala the Aiptek MyNote or Adesso CyberPad (apparently the same product). But neither works under Mac OS X as a graphics tablet. Maybe an ACECAD DigiMemo?

A program called VectorPen claims some limited support on the Digital notepad side. But in-fact VectorPen only supports the ACECAD DigiMemo.

Does anyone know if further development on VectorPen has been abandoned? It appears to be a closed source program.

Does anyone know if the ACECAD DigiMemo works as a graphics tablet at all? How about under Mac OS X?

Does anyone know of other digital notepads that also work as tablets? Genius G-Note? LaPazz D-Note? How about smaller devices like the Pegasus Mobile Notetaker or various digital pens?

No doubt people will bring up Wacom tablets. Wacom doesn't make this sort of digital notepad product afaik. I'm also reluctant to sacrifice portability by including several inches of useless space around the writing area.

I imagine that devices like the Nokia Internet Tablet don't really allow for note taking?

posted by jeffburdges to computers & internet (6 comments total)

No doubt people will bring up Wacom tablets. Wacom doesn't make this sort of digital notepad product afaik.

A bit more expense and hassle if you don't find anything else: The device you link to seems to be a poor-man's tablet-PC, and Wacom is used in many (and used to be most) proper tablet-PCs. Since OSX runs on intel these days, and some people have it running on non-apple machines, and wacom is supported, you may have an angle that way. If so, then there are plenty of products available. Just not cheap ones. :-/ (On the bright side, they'd allow much more than just note taking and digitizing)
posted by -harlequin- at 1:20 PM on December 22, 2007

I wanted a way to save hand written notes without taking up real world space. Here a cheap product is way more useful than an expensive one since you can take it more places. I'll happily think about any small inexpensive devices like the Nokia Internet Tablet (~ $400). But I'm not sure they can handle written notes?

I'd also imagined that a graphics tablet might prove useful for working with co-authors remotely. I suppose, if no such Mac product exists, I could try an ordinary graphics tablet, just to see how I like them, and then hope Mac compatible notepads appear.

So here's another question: Just how much better is a Wacom? I'm not an artist. I just want to sketch stuff and write equations. We currently just write equations in Skype in LaTeX code, which is fine. What's the point of a Wacom if your not an artist? Well, one point is that Wacom may be the only tablet maker who has Mac compatible handwriting recognition, but I'm probably not using that anyway. Any other considerations?
posted by jeffburdges at 2:14 PM on December 22, 2007

Re: the wacom question, if you're not an artist, then all tablets are pretty much fine (not counting platform interoperability and software). In terms of features, a wacom products just have the better of the available tech options. Eg, some tablets use a mechanism that needs a battery in the pen, some don't. (Wacom doesn't). Some tablets have graded pressure sensitivity, some just detect pen-tip touching vs not touching. (Wacom has graded sensitivity, generally more levels of pressure too). Some tablets have a cord, some are battery powered and wireless (wacom offers both). Some have a built-in screen, some don't. And so on.

Without a screen behind it though, handwriting is weird and doesn't work very well.
(Even with a screen, I hardly ever use it for handwriting, as for me, typing is so much faster)
If you look, you can probably find some super cheap small tablet for under $20 to play around with, and while it won't be very nice, it at could least give you a ballpark idea of how useful a better one might be.
It sound like you won't get much out of a normal graphics tablet though. It might be better to borrow one off someone to try it out, rather than buy something that will probably just end up kicking around your place as junk. (I find that normal external tablets are really useful 1% of the time, and the other 99% just kick around and get in the way :-)
posted by -harlequin- at 2:37 PM on December 22, 2007

if you haven't looked into e-paper book readers with note-taking capability, keep an eye on them. I doubt the product you want exists there yet, but I have a feeling that that's where something of interest to you might come from in the next few years.
posted by -harlequin- at 2:39 PM on December 22, 2007

Recent question along the same lines.
posted by ikkyu2 at 5:47 PM on December 22, 2007

fyi, Inkwell opens just fine with Aiptek's MyNote, but it sees all tablet input as off the bottom of the screen.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:32 AM on December 23, 2007