Pen and Paper Find a Place in the Digital World

As the saying goes, the pen is mightier than the sword. But I'd also venture that the pen can be mightier than the keyboard. After spending hours each day typing out emails, text messages, tweets, Facebook comments and instant messages using similarly dull fonts, the sight of anything written in another person's handwriting can be quaintly touching.

Targus The Targus iNotebook consists of a notebook case, a customized pen and a paper notebook. A sensor bar above the pad receives signals from the pen as it is used and can beam what is written wirelessly to the iPad.

For the past week, I've tried using a tool from Targus that breathes digital life into good old handwriting. It's the iNotebook, a $180 gadget that digitizes and saves words written on regular paper to the iPad.

The Targus iNotebook takes signals from a pen as it is used to write on paper, then beam what is written wirelessly to the iPad. Katie Boehret discusses on digits. Photo: iNotebook/Targus.

Using a free, iPad-only app called iNotebook, people can sort their handwritten notes into various notebooks, tabs and pages. They can enhance their notes with cool background images, highlighted text, stamps and different text colors. Audio recordings can be added to notes, and notes can be saved to Dropbox or emailed to friends.

While the iNotebook is definitely a niche product, it's fun to use and more satisfying than writing on a glass tablet surface using a stylus. People who primarily rely on handwritten notes—whether because they can write faster or because they like making quick annotations or drawings with their notes—will want to consider this device.

But its $180 price tag, which is over half the cost of the iPad Mini, will scare buyers off. And in a few instances, the iNotebook pen was a little flaky.

The iNotebook consists of a handsome notebook case, which is available in all black or white canvas with black accents. Inside, a customized pen and a 100-page notebook with lined pages and a black cover slide into the case. (Targus's notebook refills cost $5, but other similarly sized notebooks would also fit.) A special sensor bar runs horizontally above the notebook; it receives signals from the pen as it writes, and communicates wirelessly with the iPad when it's connected via Bluetooth.

Targus isn't the first company to try moving handwriting into the land of digital. Back in 1998, IBM attempted to bridge the gap between PC and paper with its CrossPad, which used a pen with a radio frequency transmitter and required a serial cable to connect to a PC. Microsoft incorporated handwriting recognition software into its tablet PCs in the early 2000s. And Livescribe has tried since 2007 to popularize its technology, which uses a pen with a tiny, built-in camera and special paper to record and wirelessly transmit text as you write.

The iNotebook sensor and pen both run on rechargeable batteries that can be charged by plugging into a USB port, and an included split USB cord simultaneously charges the pen and sensor. Both last, fully charged, for 60 days on standby, according to Targus. The sensor automatically turns off after an hour if it hasn't been used for writing. In use, the sensor is estimated to last 15 hours while not paired via Bluetooth to the iPad, or six hours when it is paired. The pen lasts for 10 hours of writing.

The pen comes with three standard D1 ink refills. A refill pack of 10 from Targus costs $8. The cap of this pen doubles as a stylus tip, giving users the option to write with ink on paper in the iNotebook device and then quickly switch over to writing with a stylus in the app.

Any paper can be used with the iNotebook—even a cocktail napkin—so long as the iNotebook pen is used for writing and the paper (or napkin) is placed on the iNotebook. Choosing one's own paper will be a boon for those who love their Moleskine notebooks and personalized journals because anything they write there can be sent back to the iNotebook iPad app. Indeed, I made a reminder note to myself on a Post-it Note stuck to a page in the iNotebook, and its text was saved in the iPad app.

The way the iNotebook works is a little complicated. Its special pen and sensor work together using infrared and ultrasonic signals that capture text as it's written; they don't use handwriting recognition. The pen works as a transmitter: When you press down to write, a switch inside the pen turns it on. The pen transmits the text data to the iNotebook sensor. This text can be instantly displayed on the iPad screen as you're writing, which feels kind of magical.

If the iPad isn't nearby or isn't connected via Bluetooth, up to 100 pages of writing can be stored on the sensor by pressing a small button on the sensor. When the iPad is nearby and/or Bluetooth is on, saved pages are imported from the sensor to the iPad app by tapping an option in the app.

I liked the free iNotebook iPad app, finding it simple to use and self-explanatory. I created five different notebooks, which were each automatically given a different color cover and placed on virtual shelves, the same way magazines and newspapers appear in Apple's Newsstand app. In the app, I added pages to a notebook by tapping the "+" icon in the bottom right of the app; on the iNotebook, I turned the page in my physical paper notebook or tapped a Next Page button on the sensor to flip to a fresh virtual page.

The iNotebook requires paper to be positioned just below its sensor. At times, when I wrote too close to the left side of my notebook page, the handwriting didn't come through or appeared as haphazard lines that didn't make sense. When I adjusted the notebook and moved it farther over into its elastic strap holders, my handwriting was accurately captured.

Targus's iNotebook isn't for everyone and its cost will keep away many curious consumers. But it's simple to use, once you get the hang of it, and its iPad app eases the process of organizing handwritten notes.

Write to Katherine Boehret at katie.boehret@wsj.com

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A New Office Finds a Place in the Cloud

Microsoft's newest version of Office, available starting Tuesday, is a radical change from the past. Office 365 will be available as a subscription that automatically renews each year and continuously updates program features. WSJ's Katherine Boehret explains. Photo: AP

Tablets and smartphones may have taken over people's lives, but Microsoft has managed to maintain a hold on the way many people use their PCs with one product: trusty Microsoft Office.

Microsoft's newest version of Office, available starting Tuesday, is a radical change from the past. For starters, Office 365 has a surprising new price model: It is only available as a subscription that can automatically renew each year. This new system constantly updates program features year round. Every time you open a program in Office, you will be running the latest version.

Microsoft In Outlook, above, fivesmall squares on the far right make sorting an inbox a cinch.

Microsoft The new version of Microsoft Word lets people have integrated conversations in editing comments.

It's also more closely tied to the cloud, saving documents to Microsoft's SkyDrive storage system by default, so your documents and personal settings are remotely accessible. With that, Microsoft aims to stave off Office challengers like Google Drive, which gives people a way to create and store documents online, as well as share documents and edit with multiple people.

What's more, Office 365 gives people a centralized spot online where they can manage their account, showing them where they have Office installed so they can deactivate unused computers with one click or completely cancel subscriptions. And files are still accessible to download even if subscriptions expire.

Along with these broader features, there are significant changes to Office 365's programs, which include Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher and Access. It does a nice job of bringing to the surface some features that were too far buried in menus for people to use. It also packs in many new features, some of which were made for touch screens and new devices designed to run the touch-centric Windows 8. And Microsoft has updated its Office Web Apps, stripped-down programs that offer free editing, via a Web browser, of files stored online.

I tested Office 365 Home Premium, which costs $99 a year and can be installed on up to five computers, including Windows 7 and Windows 8 PCs as well as Macs running Apple's OS X version 10.5.8 or later. Office 365 University, which costs $80 for a four-year subscription, is available for college students, faculty and staff and can be used on two PCs or Macs. Office 365 Small Business Premium works on five PCs or Macs and costs $150 per year.

Microsoft PowerPoint presentations now have special CliffsNotes-like tools only the presenter can see.

Traditional, non-subscription versions of Office are available for one-time fees, including Office Home and Student 2013 ($140), Office Home and Business 2013 ($220) and Office Professional 2013 ($400). These new suites still receive security patches, as they always have, and can only be installed on one machine and upgrades require installing whole new versions. Like Office 365, these versions of Office also now save to SkyDrive by default, tying them into the cloud.

I installed Office 365 Home Premium on two devices: a Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T, which had a touch screen and was running Windows 8 Pro, and a MacBook Pro, which was running OS X version 10.8.2. I also looked at and edited documents on computers that didn't have Office 365 installed by using Microsoft Web Apps. And I set up Office 365 on a Windows Phone to access and edit documents on the go.

To install on the Windows 8 PC, I used a product key given to me by Microsoft for pre-release testing, otherwise you would have to go to Office.com to buy a subscription and get a product key. (A free 30-day trial is available.) The Windows 8 PC install took about 20 minutes, and a helpful introduction walked me through key points of Office 365. One screen asked me, "How would you like your Office to look?" And I scrolled through a handful of patterns and chose a background that looked like rings on a tree stump.

When I installed Office 365 on the Mac, I just went online to office.com/myaccount, selected an option to sign into an existing subscription and entered my username and password. The download on the Mac took about 30 minutes and then I saw on my Mac the familiar tree-ring background. The version was Office: Mac 2011 because the new Office for Mac typically ships after the new Office for Windows.

The My Account Web page is a big plus for people who have had computers die and take copies of Office with them. Now, in one step on My Account, any PC can be deactivated and a new PC can be activated.

The cloud-based structure of Office 365 takes some adjustment, but users can still save files to the PC. In Word, when I wasn't connected to the Internet and opened a document, I saw a notification reminding me that the version of the document I was reading was an offline copy. This notification also told me when the document was last updated and saved online. Each Office 365 account comes with 20 gigabytes of free storage, but all SkyDrive users get seven gigabytes each, so a person using Office 365 could potentially have 27 gigabytes of storage.

I enjoyed using new touch features, like five small squares on the far right of the Inbox screen in Outlook that made it a cinch to quickly sort through my inbox. These small icons enabled replying, moving, deleting, marking as unread and flagging for follow-up. I wrote this column in the new version of Word, automatically saving it to SkyDrive and easily opening and editing it on other computers and a Windows Phone.

Excel spreadsheets are now smarter than ever thanks to auto-fill features. I tested one that felt like it was reading my mind as it filled in names of people who had appeared in an earlier column because it detected the same name pattern. PowerPoint presentations now include special CliffsNotes-like tools that only the presenter can see.

Office 365 feels grown up and ready for the fast pace of the Web. It's custom-made for people who use many devices, including desktop PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones. If potential users can wrap their brains around its new subscription system, Microsoft has a winning program on its hands.

Email katie.boehret@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared January 30, 2013, on page D1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Microsoft's Newest Office: More Control For Annual Fee.

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