Product Review: Adesso CyberPad From Adesso

The Adesso CyberPad is really two products in one. First it is a notepad for anyone who takes lots of notes and does not want to either transfer them to electronic form by scanning, copying, or re-typing them via a word processor. It is also a graphics tablet that will allow you to draw directly in many products including Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or other programs that support tablets.

Adesso CyberPad comes as a complete package with everything that you need to get going out of the box. It comes with the tablet, the battery operated pen, three ink cartridges for the pen, a USB cable to connect to your computer, software to both run the driver, as well as accessory software, rechargeable batteries and a battery charger, a tablet of note pad paper, and a portfolio to hold your tablet, pen, and other items.

The accessory programs that come with the Adesso CyberPad tablet are:

• My Ink/My Form – an application that gives you the ability to view and manage your handwriting documents and allows them to be translated to a digital format. It converts you handwritten documents to a .TOP file which can also be converted to bitmap (.bmp), JPEG (.jpg), and Acrobat (.pdf) which gives you different ways of retaining and sharing your hand written notes.

• Free Notes – allows you to draw and write notes from your tablet and then insert them into your emails and other files.

• Power Presenter RE II – lets you turn your screen into a Whiteboard/Blackboard with Microsoft PowerPoint. You can save all handwriting, annotation, and notes within a presentation.

• Office Ink – lets you create digital signatures in almost any application.

• riteMail – can read CyberPad document files to transferring your handwriting to text. It supports and recognizes 4 languages; English, French, German, and Russian.

To run Adesso CyberPad you need a Pentium II or higher computer that runs Windows Vista, XP, or 2000, 128 MB of Ram or more, at least 32MB of hard-drive space, and a USB port.

So how does the Adesso CyberPad work? The two main areas that I worked with were the note taking and the graphics tablet. From my stand point, that is why I would want this product. I played with the handwriting recognition software a little bit, but you have to train it to recognize how you make letters. From my point of view I can type faster than I can write, so if it is something that need in that format, I would type it.

Notes on the other hand, are very easy to work with. Basically, you turn the tablet on, select a page and start writing. The organizational structure is such that you can have up to 26 directories (a thru z) and up to 99 pages within each of those directories. A lot of this depends on memory. The system itself comes with 32 MB of on board storage, but you can add an SD card for more space. So realistically, you could take this to a conference, make notes all week and come home, download them and have an online record of everything you wrote. It works really well even through a tablet of paper that contains 100 sheets of paper or more.

The second thing that I wanted to look at this for is the graphics tablet. The first thing you have to do is turn it 90 degrees so that it is landscape mode with the function buttons at the top. Next you may want to save the first ink cartridge that runs out since when working with a graphics tablet, since you don't need to spread ink on a page, but you do need to use the pen. I worked with it using Photoshop and in my opinion it worked pretty well. As with any graphics tablet you have to get used to the differences between it and a mouse, but it faired well.

So did I have an problems with the Adesso CyberPad? The are a couple of things that I could make this a better product.  The software, which overall worked well, came with little documentation. This could be improved with either more details, or perhaps an online videos that can show one how to work more efficiently. The second is that the pen is thicker than I am used to  holding and so took me a little bit to get used to. I know that there is a battery in the pen and that dictates its size, I only mention it for those who may have problems holding a thick device.

Bottom line, if you are looking for a cost effective way to capture the notes that you take and save them to your PC, or are looking to have the use of a graphics tablet without having to outlay a lot of money then the Adesso CyberPad provides a serious solution that I can recommend.