E-pens Mobile Notes is a handwriting capture and recognition solution to help transcribe written notes quickly and easily into a digital format for use on a computer. Similar to Dane-Elec's Zpen, the package includes a stylus that uses real ink, a receiver unit and appropriate software.

Used in one of two modes, the receiver can either take notes remotely or attach to a computer for conversion and to allow the e-pens to double as a mouse.

In mobile mode the e-pens receiver is connected to the top or side of a piece of paper or a pad using one of three in-built clips to hold it in place. It's important to have a clean line of sight between the pen and the receiver, so you must keep objects clear and, if left-handed, place the receiver at the right of the page.

Turn the receiver on and it'll start recording pen strokes, with a pen symbol lighting up on the display to indicate that a signal is being received. As well as this, the readout shows the current number of pages (up to 50 A4 sides) stored in memory, with a new page added by pressing the control button. Notes can be transferred to your PC by connecting the receiver via the mini-USB cable supplied, opening the NoteTaker software and importing the new objects.

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In addition to ‘mobile mode', the pen can also be used as a mouse by changing it to ‘mouse mode', in which case hovering the pen over the paper moves the cursor and tapping on a surface simulates a left-click. A separate plastic stylus is provided to prevent ink from being scribbled onto a desk or other surface.

We'd expect most users to want to convert notes to text with the e-pens, so accurate recognition is obviously an important factor. Conversion is done through the Mobile Notes software, which can convert to rich text or graphics and text, with various selectable languages and a choice of three handwriting styles to improve accuracy. Selected areas of the page can be highlighted for conversion and the page size itself changed, so there's a nice degree of control here.

In terms of how accurately it rendered our scrawl, we found the results to be pretty good. Tests involved writing a series of sentences in four different ways: capital letters, standard handwriting, ‘neat' handwriting and scrawl. The only one of these that was recognised with 100% accuracy was the neat handwriting effort, though strangely there was only one mistake in the scrawl, leaving it at 99% accuracy. Capital letters fared OK when reconverted using the appropriate setting and the standard handwriting came in at 97%.

It is possible to improve accuracy further using MyScript Notes' handwriting trainer, which takes a little while to work through but did shore up some of the mistakes in our previous tests.

Unfortunately images didn't fare as well, since if any portion of an image could be interpreted as a letter it is converted as such, thereby affecting recreation of the picture. Other than that the only qualm we had was a minor issue regarding the provided stylus, which feels a little cheap and plastic and, with no rubberised grip for your fingers, is prone to slipping.

As mentioned, the e-pens can also be used as a mouse, though initially this is a little tricky to get used to and you might find yourself fiddling with Windows' mouse-speed settings to get the desired degree of accuracy. It is quite responsive, though, and after a bit of practice is a fairly quick way to move around and might be good alternative to a graphics tablet for some designers.

In comparing the e-pens to Danelec's Zpen, we found it slightly more accurate and flexible, due to the fact that it can double as a mouse, but not quite as comfortable to use or as solidly built. Whichever you choose, both devices have their relative merits and are certainly capable of storing notes and converting them for use on a computer.