For those who don’t want to invest in a tablet PC, we ran across a great little device in the South Hall called DUO that does double duty as a tablet stylus and a graphic drawing surface on plain paper. It is offered by Korea-based Pen and Free Co.
DUO converts almost any laptop or computer LCD into a touch screen with full tablet functionality. The DUO is essentially a wireless digital pen/mouse that combines ultrasonic waves and infrared rays (to acquire X and Y coordinates) and connects to a user’s laptop or monitor through a USB-powered base station. Unlike other digital pens this one can trade out the stylus for a ballpoint and by moving the receiver dongle placed near plain paper both draw and reproduce images on a computer.
In addition to writing, highlighting and drawing, you can capture personal handwriting and automatically convert it to ASCII characters. You can also capture and save all or part of your notes and drawings in a jpeg file leaving the original document unmarked.
The DUO can be ordered online for $120 (Mac driver available January 2010).