
Producing something by sitting down and typing can often be a stumbling block for me because I don’t focus on the specific writing I mean to, I get sidetracked with something else entirely, or I don’t feel like typing. I am not Hamilton and I’m not writing like I need it to survive (warning: that links leads to one of my favorite Hamilton songs). There are also Evernote and Dropbox hook-ups, but I haven’t found them useful because they import the notes as pictures.įree your mind (from the constraints of digital devices). Text dumps via copy and paste to the app of your choice are relatively painless. It’s not great for lightning inspiration moments, but for scheduled “put your ass in a seat and write” times, it works.
Equil note app portable#
More portable than a desktop and easier to use in less spacious locales than a digital device and Bluetooth keyboard. I have a lot of trouble getting myself to go to bed, so activities I can do from my bed that won’t cause me to get all wound up are good for me. I can cut out screens while I’m winding down at night. Anything I can fix on my phone instead of my desktop computer is a win because it allows me to utilize time I spend on the bus (and I spend so much time on the bus). I wrote a rough draft of a blog post with pen and paper and, with a few clicks, I had digital text. It’s pretty easy to type up a missed word or paragraph and, because the pen uses ink, I can see what is missing or what was mis-converted and fix it. In this blog post, I needed to retype a few paragraphs that were dropped between writing and transmitting or converting the writing. Letters, words, and paragraphs don’t import or don’t convert well (or at all) from the handwriting.
Equil note app how to#
I’ve only used Equil Note, and while the app isn’t difficult to use (it’s similar to Evernote), the user interface is not intuitive when you’re learning how to utilize it.
Equil note app free#
Both are free apps with in-app purchases. The only apps the Equil Smartpen 2 seems to connect to are the two apps put out by Equil: Equil Sketch and Equil Note. I haven’t run out of ink and the device comes with a second ink cartridge. In terms of ink, the pen takes regular pen ink cartridges, that can be picked up anywhere you pick up pen cartridges. Although if it doesn’t light up, you’ll know you’re out of juice. So many questions come to mind: how much power is left in the pen? Do I have ink? What apps does it connect to? To see how much power is left in the pen, connect the smartpen to your device and check it through the app. The device is both a regular pen and an electronic pen. I’ve taken to having buffer pages between my top page and additional writing paper because the impressions from previous pages seemed to be creating weird lines. Fortunately, after the third or fourth try connecting the smartpen to my phone, everything worked like it was supposed to. A language package to be able to convert handwriting into digital text is only $5.99, but if a product says that a feature is included with the product, I don’t want to pay to get the promised feature.
Equil note app plus#
Plus I needed to quit and restart Equil Note, the tool’s writing app, before I could get it recognize the pen and stop prompting me to buy the English language package. There are lots of bits and bobs to learn to fully utilize this tool and the software.Ĭonnecting the pen and transponder to your device and computer looks easy, but it took a few tries before all of my devices were all on the same page. If the handwriting isn’t near perfect, the app won’t be able to translate the handwriting This pen is slightly unwieldy for me, although I have gotten better with practice. My hand is 6.5 inches from thumb tip to little fingertip. You need impeccable handwriting with a larger than normal pen. The Phree doesn’t have a dedicated app for capturing the data stream from the pen and purportedly doesn’t need as many accessories to work, so I’m still interested in trying it out. The Phree is still in pre-order for $198.

Note: another tool similar to this pen is the Phree, which I’ve written about before. It retails for $189.95 on the manufacturer’s site and $154.99 on Amazon (the Amazon product has more accessories than what I purchased.) I picked mine up, still sealed in the package, for $35 at Goodwill. Things did not work out like they would in my dream world, but realistically speaking for what the technology can do I’m still happy with the result. I was excited to try a tool that could potentially let me take notes and digitize them plus turn my handwriting into text. I’ve been trying to cut down on my screen time at bed time however, writing at bed time allows me to get thoughts out so they don’t keep me up. Most of my writing is housed on my phone and desktop computer (or an app that I have on both).
