Capturx for Microsoft OneNote 2007 2.0 is a digital pen product from Adapx that offers tight integration with OneNote 2007, with a suggested retail price of $349. The pen includes a docking station with a USB cable and software. Adapx kindly loaned me a trial unit so I’ve had the opportunity to spend some quality time with the product, putting it through its paces in various note-taking scenarios, and came away impressed with it. The pen is a bit chunkier than normal ink pens but still felt comfortable in my hand. It runs on a lithium-ion battery which you can recharge by placing it in its docking station.

OneNote is a great integration choice for this product, because of the searching and organizational tools it provides for your notes. You can also use it as a jumping-off point for transferring your notes into Microsoft Word 2007 or PowerPoint 2007.

Using the Capturx Digital Pen and Notebook

Capturx requires OneNote 2007, and either 32-bit Windows Vista or Windows 7. Like other digital pens out on the market, Capturx works with a special paper that you can purchase directly from Adapx or print out yourself. The software enables you to print the paper directly from Capturx to a four-color PostScript laser printer.

For purposes of my review, I used one of Adapx’s digital notebooks with the pen. The notebooks resemble a loose leaf binder but the paper inside is a bit thicker and glossier than normal notebook paper. I brought my poor penmanship along and started taking notes in the provided notebook and on some of the paper printed from my printer. Downloading my notes was as simple as docking the pen in the included dock.

Once you dock your pen to download your notes, Capturx prompts you to name the notebook, or choose a notebook for your notes. Your notes then appear in OneNote:

Choose Tools -> Convert Handwriting to Text and your handwriting is converted to text:

While I’m not going to say that the conversion was always perfect during my testing, even with my poor penmanship the conversion left me with enough to work with. I could easily see myself taking the Capturx digital pen to a client meeting for taking notes and getting enough out of the conversion to start a technical document after making some edits to the converted text. My handwritten notes have become a bit chunkier and boxier over the years, so I don’t write using cursive script, but I still found myself paying a little more attention to how I formed my letters, which seemed to help in how the software understood my handwritten notes.

While you can’t convert your hand-drawn diagrams for use in a tool like Visio, I did like the way I could archive the diagrams in OneNote for searching later. This would help me stay more organized and give me another reason to move past the old-school yellow legal pads that I use for taking notes. If you’re like me and looking to better bridge the gap between your handwritten notes and your PC but have been hesitant about digital pen technologies, I recommend checking out Capturx for Microsoft OneNote 2007 2.0.

I give it high marks for its tight integration with OneNote and handwriting recognition that even worked with my poor penmanship. I can envision myself using this tool to digitize my own notes from client meetings and doing away with unnecessary transcription of my handwritten notes or having to retain paper notes, and avoiding the ever-embarrassing situation of not understanding my own notes a week or two after the call or meeting.

Have you tried out Capturx for Microsoft OneNote 2007 2.0, or other digital pen? How did it work for you?

Here is a sampling of some of the OneNote 2007 Power Toys — made by Microsoft and third parties — that I’ve found useful during my time as a  OneNote user:

Send to OneNote: I like to use OneNote 2007 as a repository for research information. I have come to rely on this Power Toy to shuttle documents into OneNote by clicking on a file in My Documents, choosing “Send To”, and then selecting “OneNote 2007″ as the destination. Send to OneNote from Outlook: I’ve been using this Microsoft-developed Power Toy since OneNote 2003. It’s the perfect tool for archiving emails to OneNote 2007. You can access it from Outlook 2007’s message ribbon. This Power Toy is one of my favorites because I like to save important emails in my OneNote notebooks.

Send to OneNote from Internet Explorer: While I admit I was one of the first to upgrade to IE 8, I only use it for testing purposes or when I have to access microsoft.com. Installing this Power Toy adds a Send to OneNote option on the Internet Explorer Tools menu. Go to a Web page, and then choose Send to OneNote from the Tools menu, and the Web page appears in the Unfiled Notes section of OneNote 2007. I’ve gotten away from clipping Web pages into OneNote after discovering delicious but still find it useful for things like saving ecommerce site receipts.

Export Outlook Notes to OneNote: Prior to the launch of OneNote, many of my project notes, article ideas, thoughts and other random synapse misfirings resided in Outlook Notes. I recommend this Power Toy if you want to make the jump from Outlook Notes to OneNote 2007 nirvana.

Clip to OneNote from Mozilla Firefox. While the Firefox extensions available for sending a Web page to OneNote aren’t Power Toys, they serve the same role as the Send to OneNote from Internet Explorer Power Toy. Unfortunately, some of the Firefox to OneNote extensions (for example, the Firefox OneNote extension) available are not yet updated for Firefox 3.5 The Firefox Add-ons site has two options for clipping Web pages and sending them to OneNote. Send/Clip to OneNote is marked for older Firefox versions and Clip to OneNote, which is marked experimental but works well. Note that you have to specify the path to OneNote for the Clip to OneNote extension to work. Here is a sampling of the extension’s output into OneNote:

Even if you are having fun with OneNote 2007 out of the box, these Power Toys can help better integrate OneNote for information intake from your most used desktop applications, making you a more productive and even happier OneNote 2007 user.

What power toys do you use to make OneNote more productive?