Digital pen or graphic tablet? Get the right tool for the job

Several people have recently asked me to clarify the differences between graphic tablets and digital pens, because they have been nervous and still don’t know which one suits their purpose better. Choosing the right tool for the job is essential, unless you want to do the work yourself: I wouldn’t pick a spreadsheet to write a letter on is a pretty basic analogy.

Digital pens are an amazing innovation and a fantastic tool for handwriting notes, recording and playback of lectures, meetings, whatever you want. They work remotely from your PC and are self-contained as they record both audio and write it to storage within the pen and the data is transferred to your PC later.

The fact that they have a highly sensitive microphone and recording device inside makes the pen thick and heavy to use. But they work extremely well and the memory storage has to fit somewhere. The sound recording is easily synchronized with each batch of written notes, giving, for example, a student, lawyer or real estate agent a complete verbal and visual memory of the conference or meeting.

The more expensive flavors come complete with the apps you need for the most sought-after feature: transcribing your written notes into typed text. Called MyScribe, cheaper models don’t include it and you’ll have to buy MyScribe separately, it’s not cool, but it’s not expensive either.

There are still some issues with handwriting on the typed text feature and certainly my Mac doesn’t work with my Livescribe, it just freezes. However, with Windows it’s really magical and as long as the writing is reasonably smooth in straight lines, it works without many or any bugs to fix. By the way, digital pen technology is for writing and not graphics: simple line drawings, sketches and mind maps, yes, but not complex graphics or photo editing.

Graphics tablets differ in that they are 6-inch by 8-inch pads and up and must be connected to the computer or at least close enough if you have a wireless model. The pad comes with a wireless digital pen that is used to write and draw naturally on the pad as you would on paper. Most come with a graphics package and will work with most graphics programs available, including the free Gimp and others like it.

In my own experience with every different make and model used, including the cheapest one, the handwriting recognition technology is actually very good. It has to be ‘trained’ to your particular script or in my case squiggles, after which errors are rare. The pencil glides across the pad with little additional effort; Not the case with digital pens, which can require a bit of pressure to get results, which tends to make your hand ache with prolonged use.

With a graphics tablet, the pen does not contain data, so it is small and light, just like a normal pen to use. More expensive models come with pressure-sensitive tips for natural drawing and painting, but this does not affect the handwriting function. There is also no doubting the quality of the graphics features, they are superb and will encourage creativity in anyone who tries them.

Inexpensive graphics tablets like the Genius Mousepen 8×6 are perfect for clutter-free kids’ entertainment, while the digital pen is a tool and not really suitable for youngsters to play with.