Archive for ‘Office Supplies’ Category
Paper Doll’s NAPO2016 Recap: Samsill’s Duo & Trio & Pop…Oh, My!
Last time, we covered the conference aspect of NAPO2016. That’s the part that’s a mixture of college courses (education), class reunions (networking), and cocktail parties (food, beverages, and entertainment). But Paper Doll knows that you come here for the expo talk — you want to know about the shopping!
This year, we start with a newcomer, a vendor we’ve not seen before at NAPO conferences, Samsill. If Samsill were a person, it would be almost old enough to collect Social Security, but it’s not as well-known as some of its competitors in the world of office supplies.
Samsill showcased three products that really got attention at this year’s NAPO Expo.
Duo 2-in-1 Organizer
The Duo is the first of two hybrid products from Samsill. It combines a seven-pocket expanding accordion file with a 1″ three-ring binder. The accordion file portion holds up to 225 sheets of paper, while the accordion-style expanding portion includes blank write-on index tabs so you can customize your labels.
The Duo has a dual elastic clasp and cord closure to provide access to each portion (pockets or binder) individually while maintaining a secure closure to either or both sections. The Duo weighs 14.6 ounces and measures 9.8″ x 1.5″ x 11.8″.
Here, we see Paper Doll friends and colleagues Nanette Duffey and Michelle Cooper modeling the flexibility of the Samsill Duo.
Think of the Duo as a grown-up Trapper Keeper in which you can store tax prep or financial information (budget, bills, coupons, and shopping lists), family medical files (with categories for tests, prescriptions, and dietary rules), or household plans (with sections for decorating, monthly upkeep, garden plans, etc).
The Samsill Duo is lightweight and flexible, but durable and water-resistant, and is made of PVC-free, acid-free, archival-safe environmentally flexible polypropylene. (Paper Doll fans know that while I am a paper doll, I do love my poly products!) The Duo comes in Hot Pink, Turquoise, Green, Burgundy, Orchid, Black, Light Blue, and Coral.
Find Duo 2-in-1 Organizers at Amazon for about $10.79.
Trio 3-in-1 Organizer
With the Samsill Trio 3-in-1 Organizer, you still get:
- the seven-pocket expanding accordion file folder (which holds up to 225 sheets of paper)
- the 1″ three-ring binder with blank write-on index tabs so you can customize your labels
- the dual elastic clasp and cord closure which allows you to open or close the areas independently of one another
- PVC-free, acid-free, archival-safe environmentally flexible polypropylene
- the same weight and measurements
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
The Trio also has retractable hangers which turn the TRIO into a hanging file, so you can store it conveniently in a file cabinet, desktop file box, or filing drawer in your desk without fearing that it will sink below the visibility of other files or worrying that the poly will make it slide to the bottom of the drawer.
Store your ringed notes, sort and organize your handouts, bills, and paperwork, closed it all, secure the binder, and safely file away your Trio when you’re not using it.
The Trio currently only comes in only two colors, Black (sometimes labeled Dark Grey) and Turquoise, but I’m sure if you all let them know how much I’d like them in Hot Pink and Burgundy, the people at Samsill would be happy to oblige. Find the Samsill Trio for about $9-11 on Amazon.
Both the Samsill Duo and Trio are eminently designed for durability, portability, and storage. They — particularly the Duo versions — are bright and colorful. However, there is significant “floppyability” about this combined binder/accordion file when open, and poly can be slippery, so these are probably more suited to office supply use than for younger school-aged kids (or adults, I guess) without sufficient fine motor control.
Pop N’ Store
The Belle of the Samsill Ball was definitely their line of Pop N’ Store boxes, which offer innovation, practicality, and aesthetics. The Pop N’ Store’s space-saving folding-box system is sold flat-packed, but POPS from flat to popped up in five seconds. Samsill’s patent-pending locking system holds the boxes’ bottoms in place, so they are entirely suitable for stacking.
The double-thickness walls of the boxes are made of heavy-duty chipboard and are covered with
Lotus Seed™ textured paper, and the box bottoms are covered in scratch-resistant fabric to protect delicate surfaces in your home or office and offer a touch more support for the contents of any box. And the box corners are metal-reinforced to add durability and smart accenting.
The boxes are made of 100% recycled material and 70% post-consumer material.
These lidded, decorative storage boxes come in five sizes with the following (internal) dimensions:
- Document Box (12″ x 8.5″ x 3″)
- Essential Box (14.625″ x 7.5″ x 5.34″)
- Medium Document Box (12″ x 8.625″ x 5.8″)
- Medium Square Box (9.75″ x 9.75″ x 5.75″)
- Mega Box (14.625″ x 11.875″ x 7.34″)
The boxes currently come in Black, Navy, Red, Brown, Grey and White. (At press time, Paper Doll was awaiting word on the availability of the colorful, patterned versions shown above, but we have learned that these are prototypes for future line extensions.)
Pop N’ Store lets you organize everything from linens to office supplies, gifts to crafts, toys to CDs, to whatever you want to store: tucked away, stacked, shelved, and shown off. Find them at Amazon from $11.99 to $16.99.
The Due, Trio, and Pop N’ Store are just a few of the items Samsill had on display at NAPO2016, and just a small subset of their wares. Samsill is best-known, for example, for their traditional three-ring binders in traditional and D-style rings. Above, Samsill’s Drew Bowers with my NAPO and BCPO® colleague Helene Segura are showing off the Speedy Spine, which purports to let you insert spine labels five times faster than other types of binders.
Samsill also makes Heavy Duty Clean-Touch Anti-Microbial binders (to keep you germ-free in a medical setting or around jam-handed colleagues), value-priced storage binders, Earth’s Choice™ Biobased + Biodegradable Round Ring View Binders, traditional poly round-ring binders (suitable for schlepping to Social Studies), truly enormous 6-inch capacity binders, and a collection of 1″ Fashion Print round-ring binders.
Samsill also makes padfolios, business card holders, laptop cases, tablet sleeves and a variety of other office supplies, and I’m looking forward to what they will be displaying at NAPO2017. From their website, it appears their retail locations are primarily in Kansas and Oklahoma, but you can find all of the above products on Amazon.
Paper Doll Post:
Up Filer: A New Vertical Filing Solution
Got paper?
Of course you do. And most of your papers for your life and work probably live in some typical places: standing up in file folders in desk-top file boxes or step risers, or hidden away in filing cabinet drawers, or flat on your desk (and maybe piled all around it), with whatever is larger and/or on top obscuring whatever is below.
If you have lots of flat, non-bulky paper items, perhaps you’ve invested in a flat filing cabinet, with a variety of drawers to allow art projects, historical documents, and architectural designs nap in relative obscurity, often ignored or forgotten.
Or maybe you’ve embraced the vertical approach with creativity — have you piled a bunch of related papers on a series of clipboards and hung them on your wall?
@2013 ASpareAndAPairDIY.com
The problem is that many people find that it’s fairly hard to gain purchase on your projects when they are hidden away. If you’re in a communal office setting, sharing resources and working on projects requires that everyone can have access without having to knock on Joe’s door and interrupt a meeting (or his tearful third-fight-of-the-week with his sweetheart) just to get the updated specs on the current blueprints. While it may seem like more and more of what we do is digital, there is still so much flat, tangible stuff and it needs to be easily stored and fairly accessible.
A new solution from Denver-based Westerville Design is a cross between a file step-riser and an on-the-wall clipboard, with a dash of the old-fashioned library newspaper rack and a soupçon of inventiveness.
The Up Filer™ Original Vertical Wall File
Each Up Filer™ unit has ten nickel-plated steel hangers designed to hold whatever flat content you need to keep off your desk, like:
- file folders
- blueprints
- design layouts
- photos
- newspapers (remember those?)
The central spine of the Up Filer™ is made of solid maple hardwood, and the full size of the contraption, spine and hangers, combined, is 11.5″ wide x 34.5″ high x 2.5″ deep (29.2cm x 87.6cm x 6.3cm).
You don’t have to limit yourself to uniform height, weight, or thickness of papers or folders. Westerville says both the thickness of the content and the width can vary greatly (though they’ve not provided maximum measurements). The site notes that the height of the content depends on the thickness, but can measure up to approximately 16.5″ (42 cm) depending on the thickness (just as when too-thick file folders tend to stand a bit too tall in a hanging folder, beyond a certain point).
The Up Filer™ Original runs $149.99 and comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee.
If you’re looking for something with similar capabilities but a little more panache, Westerville Design has you covered.
The Up Filer™ Bamboo Vertical Wall File
The Bamboo version conforms to the same measurements and specifications as the original version, but adds environmentally friendly sustainability with style, and you can select one of three colors (arranged from lightest to darkest)
- Natural
- Light Caramel
- Caramel
The Up Filer™ Bamboo runs $169.99.
Westerville Design is currently offering free shipping on both versions of the Up Filer™ to customers in the United States and Canada.
Why is the Up Filer™ better for some flat paper and storage displays?
- It doesn’t matter how small or large an item is — the design ensures that it won’t obscure what’s behind it, and it won’t be obscured by what’s on top of it.
- The Up Filer™ saves precious horizontal space and makes use of the always-forgotten-but-so-magical vertical space. The Up Filer™ is wall-mounted, so your flat items get up and out-of-the-way of your workspace.
- It’s easy. The spine of the Up Filer™ holds the hangers, and the pivoting hanger design makes it simple to remove or add items. Just lift a hanger to pop something new into the system or grab what you need.
The Up Filer™ system is designed so you put labels at the bottom of each item. It may be unusual at first to see labels at the bottom, but it lets you quickly scan your eyes down the center and see everything at a glance. Nothing will be hidden or forgotten.
In the words of the people of Westerville Design:
It quickly became obvious that it wasn’t just good for designers but would be perfect for engineers, architects, fine artists, teachers or anyone who needs a filing system that keeps all the important stuff visible and at your fingertips.
Not having been able to examine the Up Filer™ up-close-and-personal, my sense of the drawbacks is limited to a few key items:
- The price is pretty up there. Granted, a flat file cabinet is even pricier, but most people and businesses are more likely to opt for a less gorgeous and more cost-conscious storage+display solution.
- Installation/mounting shouldn’t be difficult, but if you’re all thumbs, or have a cubicle, or your home office walls are really just flimsy sheet rock, the stability of this solution may not be adequate.
- Capacity is limited. Each unit has only ten hangers, and thus holds only ten “items,” albeit those that can get fatter or larger than what you can put in a filing cabinet or on a desk-stop step riser.
To get a sense of how the Up Filer™ works, peek at this short (and silent — seriously, none of that common plinking ukulele soundtrack) video.
Of course, if you like vertical paper storage solutions, the Up Filer™ isn’t your only option. At first, I recalled the Rackit File, a wall-mounted hanging file solution I reviewed back in 2011 in Paper Doll Adjusts the Vertical Hold: Space Saving Filing Solutions. (And, of course, that post is full of more portable approaches to vertical filing.)
So, readers, on the up-and-up — would you give the Up Filer™ a try?
Paper Doll Post:
Paper Doll Surveys the (Paper) Landscape
Serendipity is an interesting thing. Last year, an unexpected project introduced me to a wide-format clipboard, and a little research into that novelty turned into a revelation about the option of landscape-oriented office supplies. At the time, I mentioned the relative rarity of landscape-formatted writing pads, sourced one, and promptly forgot about them.
Then, just this week, while trying to solve the conundrum of my favorite (and suddenly unavailable) purple legal pads, two different blogs would prove to be the inspiration for this post. But not because they were profiling pastels — because they talking about writing pads with landscape orientation.
Suddenly, that previously discovered line of landscape-orientation, Roaring Springs Wide LandscapePads, have become this week’s must-have office supply. They come in four varieties:
Standard
- 11″ x 9.5″, WHITE, college-ruled. Each pad includes 40 sheets of 20-pound, 30% post-consumer recycled paper per pad, with left-side margins. Micro-perforations at the top yield an 11″ x 8.5″ sheet. (Available singly or in two-pad packs.)
- 11″ x 9.5″, CANARY (yellow), college-ruled. Each pad includes 40 sheets of 20-pound, 30% post-consumer recycled paper per pad, with left-side margins. Mirco-perforations at the top yield an 11″ x 8.5″ sheet. (Available singly or in two-pad packs.)
- 11″ x 9.5″, ASSORTED* PASTELS (orchid, pink and blue), college-ruled. Each pad includes 40 sheets of 15-pound 30% post-consumer recycled paper per pad, consumer recycled paper, with left-side margins. Micro-perforations at the top yield an 11″ x 8.5″ sheet. (Available in three-pad packs.)
Graph
- 11″ x 9.5″, WHITE, gridded with 5×5 graph paper. Each pad includes 40 sheets of 20-pound, 30% post-consumer recycled paper per pad, with left-side margins and micro-perforations at the top. (Sold singly and in packs of two, four and six.)
Punched (for easy storage in traditional three-ring binders)
- 11″ x 9.5″, WHITE, college-ruled, three-hole-punched across the top. Each pad includes 75 sheets of 20-pound, 30% post-consumer recycled paper per pad, with left-side margins, backed by an extra-stiff 80-pt. chipboard backing. Mirco-perforations at the top yield an 11″ x 8.5″ sheet. (Sold in singly.)
- 11″ x 9.5″, CANARY (yellow), college-ruled, three-hole-punched across the top. Each pad includes 75 sheets of 20-pound, 30% post-consumer recycled paper per pad, with left-side margins, backed by an extra-stiff 80-pt. chipboard backing. Micro-perforations at the top yield an 11″ x 8.5″ sheet. (Sold singly.)
Junior
- 8″ x 6″, WHITE, college-ruled. Each pad includes 40 sheets of 20-pound, 30% post-consumer recycled paper per pad, with left-side margins. Micro-perforations at the top yield an 8″ x 5″ sheet. (Available as individual pads or in multi-packs.)
- 8″ x 6″, CANARY (yellow), college-ruled. Each pad includes 40 sheets of 20-pound, 30% post-consumer recycled paper per pad, with left-side margins. Micro-perforations at the top yield an 8″ x 5″ sheet. (Available as individual pads in multi-packs.)
- 8″ x 6″, ASSORTED* PASTELS (orchid, pink and blue), college-ruled. Each pad includes 40 sheets of 15-pound 30% post-consumer recycled paper per pad, consumer recycled paper, with left-side margins. Micro-perforations at the top yield an 8″ x 5″ sheet. (Available in three-pad assorted packs.)
*Note: Assorted pastel pads are listed on the website as 50 sheets/pad, but specifications and packaging verify they are 40 sheets/pad.
Roaring Springs Wide Landscape Pads are sold in office supply stores and on Amazon, and range from $5.28 for single pads to $13 for three-packs.
Thanks to Office Supply Geek for reminding me that these pads exist, and The Well-Appointed Desk, for inspiring me to dig more deeply.
OK, Landscape. But Why?
At first glance, landscape notepads may look a little funny to us — one client said she thought if legal pads were business suits, these landscape pads were more like crop tops. The question, though, is what can you do with them? In fact, Office Supply Geek‘s Brian Greene actually stated, “To be totally honest, after having them in my hands I still don’t really know what I’d do with them that I wouldn’t do with a regular legal pad.”
Well, Brian, that’s why Paper Doll is here!
Most of the time, when we hand-write, we are in portrait mode, and it usually makes sense. However, I can think of a sampling of reasons why we might want to have some side-to-side breathing room.
1) Notetaking — When we’re taking notes in a committee meeting or for class, we’re often creating a linear, outline-style set of notes. But, as we discussed when we reviewed the exceptional Cornell Notetaking Method, we need to make room for cues or other special attention-getting markings on the left side.
With traditional 8.5″ wide paper, that either reduces our notetaking space or forces us to write in the narrow margin, making it more likely that we’ll get inky smudges on that all-important cue-section. Landscape orientation provides more breathing room.
2) Ergonomics — Look at the available space on and around your desk. If your computer is in front of you, your keyboard is probably somewhere between elbow-and-wrist distance away, not leaving you very much space for alternating typed notes and handwritten notes. Because of that limited space, you may find you’re turning your traditional (portrait-orientation) notepad sideways, with the top to your left (unless you’re a southpaw). This lets you take written notes, but you’re probably twisting at the waist to do so. This is not sustainable or ergonomically friendly.
3) Expansive thought — When we take notes, journal, free-write, or craft letters, we’re often thinking linearly. It’s easy to follow a unidirectional flow of ideas, or paths, with a narrower piece of paper. When we’re on the computer, using Microsoft Word or any other word processing program, unless we’re using design features for creating signs or brochures, we echo that same tall/narrow format.
But what happens when we want to think more broadly (no pun intended)? When we’re on the computer, using a spreadsheet like Excel, we create multiple columns so that we can visualize information best seen side-by-side, like multiple fields in a record. But what’s the paper version? I can think of a number of times when I’ve been working with a client to brainstorm ideas in parallel (like how different departments will handle particular situations), and we end up turning a notepad sideways. The lines go the wrong way, and the content gets messy; it suffices, but it’s not optimum.
4) Mind mapping — Paper Doll is a fairly linear thinker, but when I’m trying to mind-map, or show the relationship between different processes, or do anything that’s more visual, I need more space. With some clients, we may choose mind mapping software or apps like MindNode or XMind, but we often find that an analog solution is faster and more immediate. Most often, we end up using multiple Post-It! Notes on a wall or window. That’s great when we’re in a house or office, but not so optimal when we’re in the field (even in a field), in a warehouse, or going mobile. That’s where these landscape notepads (and the aforementioned landscape clipboards) really come into their own.
5) Flow Charts — It might not be immediately apparent, but a number of law students have posted online comments regarding how landscape writing pads make it easier to visualize case-law timelines, precedents and conceptual flow. Scientists have also reported that wide-format paper helps conceptualize scientific reactions more clearly.
6) Computer/TV Screen Dimensions — Tablets and phones aside, we spend a lot of time looking at screens in landscape orientation, and sometimes we still need to make our analog notes approximate what we’re seeing, or make our digital notes approximate what we’d like to be seeing on the screen. Writing pads that parallel those dimensions are helpful.
Granted, web designers are more likely to use paper prototyping tools like the kind we discussed in Tech Planning on Paper: From Old-Fashioned to Cutting Edge, but the rest of us just need a good piece of paper that’s wider than it is tall.
Oh, but you ARE a web designer (or you play one on television)? Well, then, UI Stencils’ landscape-orientation Responsive Sketchpad may be just what you want.
Printed on both sides, the landscape-orientation, letter-sized pad is dot-gridded (150 PPI), includes fields for a project’s name, screen, date of work, and notes, as well as two device silhouettes on the front and three on the reverse.
The Responsive Sketchpad comes 50 sheets/pad, with a cardboard backing and rounded bottom corners. It runs $12.95/pad and is available at discounted rates in three-packs, five-packs and with other UI Stencils’ sketchpads.
Upgrading the Landscape
The Roaring Springs Wide LandscapePads, as well as the more tech oriented UI Stencils’ Responsive Sketchpads, aren’t the haute couture of office supplies. You’ve got something to say, and you can get it down. Function is generally prioritized over form. The Roaring Springs pads are made of recycled paper, and the focus for all is in on utility rather than beauty.
As Ana Reinert pointed out in this week’s The Well-Appointed Desk’s “Ask the Desk” feature, there’s an assumption among notebook/notepad makers that landscape orientation is for the visual artists and not for the scribblers, writers, note-takers and wordsmiths. I think that’s short-sighted, and a bit of disappointment.
Ana’s post offered up some options for the individual who asked “the Desk” about finding attractive, non-black, fountain-pen-friendly landscape-oriented notebooks. Tall order! The Well-Appointed Desk covered a nice variety of these, but most of the options were for unlined sketchbook-type pages. For those of us looking for a wide spot in the road to make our (written) mark, the choices are limited. There are handmade options, of course, but whether we’re talking bespoke Etsy creations or fin Italian handcrafted leather bindings, veering from the ordinary is not inexpensive.
How limited are the choices? One of the only mid-range lined landscape-orientation notebooks I found was an intriguingly named Düller Croquis Note. It’s manufactured in Japan by I.D.E.A. Internationals, with a German name, as part of the Schreibwaren Kollektion. The website is only written in Japanese (the English-language URL yields an error), and the only English-language sales information I could find was through AAREVALO Ltd. in London!
The notebook contains recycled paper and a mysteriously unexplained “specially textured writing surface.” There’s a “practical pocket” on the back cover, and the notebook also comes in black or light grey.
So, a Japanese company, selling a notebook described in German, is most easily accessed through a British stationery company’s online catalog? It shouldn’t have to be so hard!
It’s a little bit shocking that the go-to journal purveyor for hipsters, scholars, soccer moms and pundits, Moleskine, doesn’t have a single lined landscape-orientation journal or notebook. There really should be other widely available options aside from the Rhodia lined landscape Webnotebooks, with orange or black covers.
Paper Doll will be on the lookout (across the landscape, and over the horizon). Until then, I welcome your ideas for how you’d use landscape notepads and notebooks, and hope you will share your resources for finding lined landscape-orientation journals, notebooks and otherwise upscale writing pads.
Paper Doll Post:
NAPO 2015 Expo: Magically Organize Your Writing with the Equil® Smartpen 2
We professional organizers are pretty easy to intrigue, but hard to impress. We like novelty, and you can hear our oooohs and aahhhs across the ballroom floor at the NAPO Organizing Conference and Expo when a vendor lengthens a folder tab, come out with a poly version of a product formerly only available in paper, or builds a better hanging folder.
But as much as we appreciate novelty, we’re quick to note shortcomings as well. We’re dismissive of features we can’t see our clients actually needing, and we’re dubious of also-rans — the third or fourth or fifth practically identical copy of a product or app that doesn’t improve upon the original.
One of the products that caught Paper Doll‘s eye, and kept it focused, at this year’s Expo is a hybrid, bringing two separate but related processes together. In the past, we’ve focused on paper hybrid office products:
- An Organized Hybrid: The Evernote Smart Notebook By Moleskine
- From Paper to the Cloud: Ampad Shot Note
- It’s a Notebook! It’s a Whiteboard!: 3 Dry-Erase Notebook Innovations
In the above cases, we’ve looked at notebooks and notepads that work two ways. But what about a writing implement that can do double-duty?
Equil® SMARTPEN 2
Friend of the blog, Smead, is known primarily for paper-related office products (e.g., folders, organizers, dividers, folios, etc.), and we’ll get to the newest of them in an upcoming post. But recently, Smead has been acquiring interesting and useful tech and tech-ish products, like the MOS: Magnetic Organization System for cable and cord organizing, Stick N Find bluetooth trackers, and MOS Spring Cables for strong, tangle-free syncing, charging and playing audio.
The Equil® SMARTPEN 2 is the latest innovative acquisition, and it’s a doozy. What does it do? The SMARTPEN 2 lets you:
- Create handwritten notes, sketches and diagrams on real paper (whether that’s a fancy Moleskine or a cocktail napkin). But it can also be used as a stylus to write and draw on your iPad, which the company claims it does with superior accuracy. (Paper Doll‘s drawing skills would be a poor test of this acuity, I assure you.)
- Capture writing and doodlings and digitally transfer them to Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices without scanning or snapping photos.
- Save, modify and share the digital version of your notes (so you’ve got the original paper version, suitable for framing on your wall or locking in your safe deposit box, and the digital — even modified — version in the cloud or on your devices.
- Oh, and that modification? It includes the ability to convert your handwriting into readable, searchable, editable printed text.
- Share via email, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, or upload to the cloud for saving and sharing to Evernote, Dropbox and iCloud.
- Whatever you create with the Equil® SMARTPEN 2 syncs across all of your devices, so wherever you are, you’ll be able to create anew or access what you’ve already written.
THE BASIC ELEMENTS
The Equil® SMARTPEN 2 looks like an Apple product. It’s all white-on-white, and comes packaged in a streamlined charging cradle, a triangular base into which the two operational parts snap, and the case comes with a grey “wrap” (called a convenience case) similar to the iPad Smart Cover.
The Pen — This is a technology-“enabled” pen. That means it’s a real pen, on its own, and uses regular ballpoint ink cartridges. It’s pressure-sensitive, so it can capture every nuance of what you draw, and if you press heavily (and perhaps repeatedly), with insistence, the pen knows you’re doing the equivalent of bolding your text and SHOUTING with intensity.
In order to save the battery life, the pen goes to sleep if you don’t write for a while. One press of the small button atop the pen wakes it up, and that same button functions to alert the receiver to a “new page” (creating page breaks) and to let you go back and forth between saved pages of notes.
The charging cable includes one replacement ink cartridge.
The Receiver — At first glance, the 3″ W x 1/2″ H receiver device looks like a clip for a clipboard, and it fastens to the top of your notepad or paper in a similar manner. The pen and the receiver connect via magic (OK, infrared and radio frequency communication). The receiver determines the boundaries of the page and flashes a small red light to alert you when you’re getting too close to the top or the bottom edge of what it can detect.
As you write with the pen, the receiver device saves your notes in the built-in memory.
The receiver holds 10,000 pages of notes. When you reconnect your pen to your digital device, you automatically receive an alert about any new notes, which are ready to be imported.
You can digitize your notes in real time, but it doesn’t matter if you’re not connected to your phone or other device when you’re in creation mode. When you are ready, at the touch of the button on the top of the receiver, whatever you’ve created can be uploaded from the device and imported to your computer, phone, or tablet. (Not your fancy watch, though. At least, not yet.)
The pen and receiver are rechargeable, and the specs claim you can write or draw for eight hours between charges. Just pop both the pen and receiver into the USB-compatible charging cradle. (The receiver has a battery life indicator and a charging indicator, so you shouldn’t have any surprises.)
The SMARTPEN works with two free apps:
Equil Note — This app lets you save and organize any of the written notes you take with the SMARTPEN 2. Edit, enhance, and share them with friends and colleagues. Convert your handwriting to text for easy editing and sharing.
Equil Note has apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android mobile devices, as well as Mac and Windows for desktop use. It’s available in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, and Korean.
Equil Sketch — The sketch app lets you draw with a finer degree of control, and includes digital options like multiple brush styles and layering. You can start a picture on paper, and finesse it on the screen.
Through the apps, you can digitally choose from a variety of colors and pen tips, and up to 600 levels of pressure sensitivity, and then add more text and/or photos, digitally. You can also tag your notes so you can search and locate your content quickly.
The Equil Sketch app is only available for iPhone, iPad and Android digital devices (not desktop), and is compatible with all of the same languages as Equil Note, except for Korean, Portuguese, and Russian.
PRICE
The Equil® SMARTPEN 2 retails for $169.95 from the Equil shop, or for about $149 from Amazon, Apple and Best Buy. Access to the apps is free with a purchase of the pen.
THE FINE PRINT
There’s glossy marketing, and then there’s the occasional factual balloon pop.
Although the press materials reference doodling on a napkin, and the pen can capture notes on paper as small as a sticky note, the official specs say that the recommended paper size is 250mm x 330mm (9.85″ x 13″) or smaller — that’s anything below Letter size (US standard) or A4 (UK standard) — and notes that things “may not work properly if the paper is too small for the receiver to clip on and may have writing recognition issues if the paper surface is rough. (i.e., cardboard).“ So, don’t plan to write on something the size of a postage stamp or your next summer camp care package.
Next, the Equil® SMARTPEN 2 communicates to your digital devices through bluetooth pairing — if you’ve ever used a bluetooth headset for your phone or a keyboard for your iPad, you know to prepare for some set-up time before you can get started. One note I found in the FAQ caused a slight pause: “Make sure to go through bluetooth pairing process each time you switch the devices you are using with Equil JOT.” It’s not entirely clear whether this means you have to pair the pen each time you switch from your tablet to your phone, or just the first time for each. FYI.
Finally, the SMARTPEN 2 measures 1/2″ around the thickest part of its triangular shape, slightly thicker than a traditional Sharpie. It tapers down as you get closer to the pressure-sensitive pen-tip. Still, if you’re used to a slender, rounded pen, the grip of this might take some practice for creating fine detail.
Take a look at the Equil® SMARTPEN 2 in action.
THE COMPETITION
The Equil® SMARTPEN 2 isn’t the first to combine writing on paper with writing on a digital device and making it all interactive. (Even the SMARTPEN 1, the first iteration, wasn’t exactly first.) The Livescribe Smart Pen series (including the newest Livescribe 3, the Sky WiFi, and Echo, and older iterations) was the first to break out in this area, and for many years, I would gush when techie colleagues would show off their Livescribes. The Livescribe pens also had an embedded audio recorder, so you could tap a portion of your notes to hear what was being said contemporaneously with whatever you wrote. Pretty grand!
But the SMARTPEN 2 continues to have one advantage over the various Livescribe versions that can’t be overlooked. You can use the Equil® SMARTPEN 2 with pretty much any type of paper or notebook, so you can stick to your preferred notebook style, but after all these years, the Livescribe options still require that you buy special digital paper notepads to work. Paper Doll doesn’t know about you, but while I’m occasionally willing to shell out for a truly exceptional gadget, having to buy pricey notepads just so the pen can work is a deal-breaker for me.
WHO IS IT FOR?
Obviously, not everyone needs a smart pen. If you’re fine with keeping handwritten notes and rarely need information in digital form, you can pass. If you spend your time sitting at a desk, fully Wi-Fi-enabled, or are good with the “thumby” thing, typing without a real keyboard, even when standing or walking, it may not be for you. The SMARTPEN 2 is ideal, however, for those who are on-the-go, often standing, or in rough-and-tumble surroundings. I’m thinking of my client who is usually up in a bucket truck, using his iPad to take notes but risking damage to his expensive gadget. Or camp counselors checking kids in for the summer and taking notes of parents’ special requests. Engineers and architects, working on-site. Community physicians and nurses who don’t have immediate access to electronic medical records and are taking notes on-the-fly.
With the handwriting recognition feature, particularly the ability to turn handwriting into text, and the ability to use regular paper, the Equil® SMARTPEN 2 is worth some attention.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Paper Doll Post:
Paper Doll Gets Hooked on GeckoTech and Meets a Spy: A Shoplet Review
Periodically Paper Doll reviews new and established office supplies and accessories through the Shoplet Product Review Program.
A few years ago, I wrote the post If It Quacks Like a Duck Then It Might Be a Zebra, a Shoplet review of wackily-patterned Duck®-brand tape. Today, we’re looking at a different kind of quacker, a gecko that thinks it’s a duck.
HOOKING UP THE USUAL SUSPECTS
We professional organizers like to recommend vertical storage because it makes efficient use of otherwise underutilized empty wall/door/cabinet space. For example, we’ve previously talked about vertical file storage options that let you make use of walls in office, cubicles and even hotels. But sometimes you don’t need a big, fancy organizing tool. Sometimes, to hang a backpack or a coat, car keys or a flash drive, a nice hook will do.
When we talk about hanging things on hooks, we usually consider four solutions: nails, suction cups, adhesive-backed hooks, and 3M’s Command®-brand. Each has advantages and drawbacks:
- Nails are inexpensive — you can get a pound of them for about $3. But you also have to have a stud-finder to make sure you aren’t hammering that nail into a random piece of sheet rock, and a nail is a rather permanent solution to what might be a temporary need, especially if you’re a renter (or you redo your décor with any frequency).
- Suction cups with hooks on them seem like a great idea at first. We use them to hang squeegees and soaps-on-ropes in the shower and rainbow-glass knickknacks on our windows. But we don’t use them for heavy-duty stuff because experience tells us that the minute a suction cup gets lint-y or dusty, it pops off the window or wall.
- Plastic hooks with adhesive backing are fairly easy to place — they come with the spongy adhesive tab already affixed to the hook, and you just have to figure out where to plant it, and then remove the backing from the other side and stick it! But woe onto you if you put too much weight on a plastic hook or ever want to remove it. Chances are good that your paint job will be ruined or the spongy-sticky adhesive residue will stay behind. Good luck getting your security deposit back!
- Command®-brand hooks are great! They’re relatively easy to put in place, and are easily removed without damage to whatever surface you select. And let’s face it, they’ll hold anything, for just about forever. It’s usually my go-to option. However, although the hooks themselves are reusable, after you use up the original and spare adhesive tabs, you have to buy more.
Hence, today’s products for review. I received two: one three-pound and one five-pound capacity new breed of Reusable Hook.
THE BASICS
GeckoTech Reusable Hooks are different. No nails. No gummy adhesive. No complicated directions. And while yes, they use suction, this is not your bathtub squeegee/rainbow prism-holding suction cup.
The GeckoTech Reusable Hooks come in four weight-bearing capacities and in five packaging varieties:
- Four hooks per package, each with up to 1/2-pound (.22 kg) capacity
- Two hooks per package, each with up to one pound (.45 kg) capacity
- One hook per package, each with up to three pounds (1.3 kg) capacity
- Two hooks per packages, each with up to 3 pounds (1.3 kg) capacity
- One hook, each with up to five pounds (2.3 kg) capacity
Each hook has a large, flat, smooth, transparent surface backing from which the small, plastic hook protrudes. The backing is flexible, and while the front feels smooth, the reverse, the part that is flush with the wall or other vertical surface, is covered with itty-bitty, teeny-weeny micro-suction, invisible thingies and feels kind of gummy, though it leaves no residue.
It’s also waterproof!
GeckoTech Reusable Hooks adhere to painted surfaces that can resist stains and are easy to clean — so, not textured or matte-finish surfaces. But it also works on plasterboard, glass, laminate, stainless steel and other smooth, hard, non-porous surfaces. They don’t recommend using it on wallpaper or textured surfaces — like the bumpy, stucko-like walls of Paper Doll HQ. (You should also avoid surfaces that are “dirty, uneven, peeling or coarse.” No surprises there, eh?)
GeckoTech Reusable Hooks run between $3.42 and $4.50 per package.
HOW GECKOTECH “INSTALLS”
Using the GeckoTech Reusable Hooks is pretty easy, even for the all-thumbs brigade at Paper Doll HQ:
- Clean the vertical surface with rubbing alcohol and allow to dry.
- Affix the GeckoTech to the vertical surface and use your fingers to push out any air bubbles. Wait an hour.
- Hang your stuff.
The packaging also advises to apply hooks when the surface temperature is between 40°F and 100°F, so no trying this in Buffalo garages when you’re bored at home on a snow day, OK?
GeckoTech claims to be “over-engineered” to hold more than the weight capacity listed for any given size, so the weight on the label seems like a safe limit to which you should adhere.
It’s right in the name — the product is removable. So, put it too high, or too low, or decide three months later that you’re packing up and moving to Miami to get away from harsh winters, and you can remove it with no muss, no fuss, and no damage. And then you can put it up somewhere else!
HOW GECKOTECH “UN-INSTALLS”
Peel off corner of the backing and lift it from the wall. That’s all!
OK, that’s not entirely all. If the GeckoTech hook has been up for more than 30 days, the packaging advises blowing a hair dryer at the hook to warm it for a moment before removing. That really is all.
HOW GECKOTECH “RE-INSTALLS”
Wash the hook with warm, soapy water. Let it air dry. Reuse.
GECKOTECH VS. THE OTHER GUYS
So how do the GeckoTech Reusable Hooks stack up against the other methods we’ve considered?
From the other reviews I’ve seen, as well as the promises on the packaging, the micro-suction that the backing doohickey creates means there’s no damage to the surface left behind, and no residue. So, that knocks nails and those plastic, sticky-backed hooks out of contention.
The promised weight-bearing seems accurate, so unlike the rainbow-prism colored glass suction-cup hook on the glass balcony door at Casa Paper Doll (the one that pops off the glass about once a month), this gecko stays stuck.
I only tried hanging a few household items (below), but from the looks of it on Pinterest, the GeckoTech Reusable Hooks work for corralling everything from pot lids on the inside of kitchen cabinets to holiday decorations on the mantel to the inside of a school or gym locker.
I’d say GeckoTech is pretty on-par with my beloved Command®-brand hooks for sticktoitiveness, and because GeckoTech is waterproof and lays flat against the vertical surface, it has a few added advantages — you can use these hooks in the shower without worry about soap-scum build-up.
THE VERDICT
I really did enjoy my chance to try out the GeckoTech. I liked that it was smooth and flat against any vertical surface. There’s no way for dust or schmutz to get in behind the hook, so you don’t have to worry about aerosolized oil in the kitchen (not that Paper Doll cooks) or stray yuckiness. You can remove, clean and re-apply these hooks at any time.
I also liked that because they are transparent, you don’t have to worry about color clashes in upscale rooms. Are these hooks gorgeous? No, but except for comparing them with the fanciest of Command®-brand hooks (like the brushed nickel types), this gecko is unobtrusive.
But there were some shortcomings. The maximum weight the strongest of these babies can handle is only five pounds, and that’s just not enough for a full backpack, or a workout bag with two-pound weights, or most purses. (Paper Doll‘s purse, below, is 3 pounds, shown hanging from a five-pound GeckoTech hook.)
The GeckoTech worked fine holding a curling iron by its hanging loop, but although my fancy hair dryer is under two pounds, I didn’t quite feel confident to hang it from the three-pound hook, even for a test. (User flaw rather than product flaw, perhaps?)
GeckoTech is a win, in general, but I’d like to see even bigger ones with more weight-bearing capacity. I’m not sure at what point structural integrity would hamper this simple design, but I’d be eager to see the line expand.
007 HAS NOTHING ON HP260
The other item Shoplet provided for my review was Duck®-brand HP260 High Performance Packing Tape with a built-in dispenser. As I’ve already reviewed Duck®-brand packaging tape, I wasn’t sure what could be new. It’s still clear (“crystal clear,” the packaging reports) and yes, the 3.1mm wide tape is suitable for all of “your shipping and storage needs.” But it’s packing tape — there are only two kinds, good and lousy, and Duck® makes good tape. So what else?
I read on about the tape’s aggressive acrylic adhesive being superior for wide temperature application: “HP260 features a wide temperature range performance and is resistant to ultraviolet rays which eliminates yellowing and increases shelf life.“ I only had the tape here for a little over a week, and the temperature inside Paper Doll HQ is generally fixed between 68° and 72°. As I didn’t think to have a box shipped from Boston to Bali, I’ll have to take Shoplet and Duck® at their word. But there was one more thing.
HP260 is billed as WHISPER QUIET — and it is! Have you ever noticed how packaging tape is usually pretty squeaky? I don’t know what they’ve done to make this ninja-caliber silent, but it’s completely squeak-free. And you don’t have to take my word for it:
This spy-rated tape comes in 22.2-yard single rolls for $2.77 and multi-packs.
FINAL WORDS
GeckoTech Reusable Hooks and Duck®-brand HP260 High Performance Packaging Tape are available directly from Shoplet, which also carries business promotional products and maintains a (literally and figuratively) colorful blog about cool office supplies. In addition to selling office supplies in North America, Shoplet is a purveyor of office stationery in the UK.
Disclosure: I received these products for review purposes only, and was given no monetary compensation. The opinions, as always, are my own. (Who else would claim them?)
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