Once you put the pen to paper on the Slate, the status LED beside the transfer button turns from green to blue, alerting you to the fact that there has been activity. If you forget, your digital notes become a mess of overwritten pages, so it’s worth developing the habit. That sounds like a bit of a pain, but transferring the notes takes a matter of seconds, so you press the button as you are flipping the physical page and you are ready to go again. This is because the Slate does one page at a time. Once you start writing, it’s important to remember two things: you need to transfer your notes as you finish writing each page, and you need to keep the paper in the same position as you’re writing, ensuring it’s not moving around. You need to download the Inkspace app to your smartphone or tablet, connect the Slate to your chosen smart device with a couple of button presses, and you are ready to go. Once you are writing, drawing or scribbling inside the correct area, the system will record your notes and allow you to transfer them straight to your phone.

It uses normal paper to capture your notes the important technology is built into the Slate and the pen. Wacom’s Bamboo Slate dispenses with that nonsense. The problem is that the special paper can be expensive and difficult to get. It’s not a euphemism the paper is usually covered in dots that help the pen “see” the pen strokes and translate that into something an accompanying app can read. However, with pen systems like LiveScribe or Neo, there’s usually a catch: you have to use their own brand of special paper. Whatever the reason, there are plenty of ways to do it. Or maybe you just want a way to make your drawings digital because you can. Maybe you still need the handwritten notes, but you need a digital back-up, and you need an easy way to create pdfs and other digital files. Maybe you’re a multiple notebook user and perpetual notebook loser, like me, always on the hunt for those important notes that you’ve inevitably left in the wrong location. There are many good reasons to digitise your notes.

Bamboo paper app cost