Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This product was prematurely launched. It does not record lectures very well at all in typical lecture halls, regardless whether or not you wear the dorky earphones and regardless what setting you select for sound recording. Any ambient noise, no matter how quiet, will be picked up by the device. This noise will completely mask the speaker's voice, rendering the recording essentially useless. Because the file formats are proprietary, you cannot load the noisy files into audio processing software to filter out the noise or amplify the speaker's voice. The need for the headphones (which serve as microphones) makes the pen obtrusive in a corporate environment, where one may want to save audio recordings of meetings while taking notes. The pen has a built in microphone, but it is useless in a large room. It is often recommended that one use the headphones (wearing them around one's neck), but in normal environments with air conditioning or computers nearby, the only thing you'll record is noise. The pen does faithfully record the notes you make if you use the company's special notebooks. These contain an array of dots that tell the pen where it's located on the page. This information is stored as you write. When you upload the pen's contents to your computer, an image of what you wrote is regenerated. This is of course a neat trick, but you have to use their file format and user interface, and I find it is not sufficiently flexible. Not being able to use standard file formats like mp3 and pdf is a real nuisance. Apparently you can upload your files to the company's web site and they'll convert them to pdf for you, but what if your notes contain private or proprietary information? And even if it's just your math notes, who wants the hassle? This device may be suitable for some students if the lecture room and level of ambient noise are appropriate for the pen's limited ability to capture clean sound. This is not a trivial problem, because in its current state, unless you're recording in an ideal environment, the noise will make it impossible to hear the lecture when you play it back. You do not notice these faint background noises most of the time, but that's essentially all the pen will record. I gave up on the pen and frankly don't even know where it is at the moment. Too bad, because I got the one with 2GB of memory along with about a dozen of their special notebooks. Now I just use them with an ordinary pen and record my lectures using a digital recorder I got from Ramsay Electronics. Its sound quality is perfect, regardless where I sit, and it can record in any format I choose. I am disappointed in the unbalanced reviews I've read about this pen. One has to wonder if some of the more enthusiastic ones are from the company itself. Likewise, I found reviews online that were so slick, detailed, and positive that they had to have come from the pen maker. I have never written a review before but after reading reviews that gave this device unqualified praise, I felt it my duty to warn other potential purchasers--let the buyer beware.