Windows Phone Thoughts: Stand Up and Be Recognized! Calligrapher v7.3 by PhatWare Reviewed

What about Transcriber?

Since all Pocket PCs include Transcriber, which is a stripped down version of Calligrapher, the first question that many people ask is "why should I spend the money on Calligrapher when Transcriber is free"?

Features of Calligrapher that are missing in Transcriber include:

• PenCommander;
• Configurable toolbar;
• The full keyboard (Transcriber includes only the mini keyboard);
• Support for multiple user dictionaries;
• Editable user dictionaries.

Of these differences, I find PenCommander and the full keyboard to be the most significant advantages of Calligrapher over Transcriber. Whether they are enough of an advantage to warrant the purchase price is for each of us to decide for ourselves.

One more note about Transcriber… I was forced to stop using Calligrapher for a couple of months last year due to a short term compatibility issue with the iPAQ 2210 series when it was first released. During that interval, I switched to Transcriber on my iPAQ 2215. I found that the recognition through Transcriber was noticeably poorer than with Calligrapher. I’m not exactly sure why, but I suspect that with the frequent updates to Calligrapher, the recognition engine is tweaked and improved, giving Calligrapher an ever increasing advantage in recognition. To me, if I’m going to use a recognition system, it’s important to have the most reliable recognition. If you feel the same way, going with Calligrapher is an easy choice.

Calligrapher in the Real World

So what is the Calligrapher experience like under actual use?

I’m in a good position to comment on this. At work, I’m currently involved in the most complex and ambitious project of my career. This project involves many hours of meetings every week to discuss strategy, architecture and many other topics. These meetings are key to the success of the project, so I’m taking copious notes.

Although I’ve used my iPAQ to take notes before, I need to keep the notes from these meetings very well organized, so I’ve decided to take the plunge and use my iPAQ for all of them. I’m using PhatNotes to keep the notes organized. And in addition to keeping the notes organized, the fact that the notes are in an electronic form from the outset makes it easy to distribute them to the attendees after the meeting. As a Pocket PC advocate, the latter is particularly satisfying, as it demonstrates the utility of the Pocket PC to those who may be skeptical or consider it to be a toy. And I’ve made sure that everyone knows that I’m just sharing my notes with them because it’s easy to do so, and not that I’ve decided to take on the role of secretary at these meetings.

Calligrapher has met the challenge quite well. I’d say that accurate recognition ranges from 90 to 95%. With simple errors, I’ll usually try to correct them with the correction menu. If I can’t do so, I just go on, because the corrector window is a bit too time consuming while note taking. Then I go back after the meeting and catch any corrections that I couldn’t do at the time.

This pretty much mirrors the approach that I’ve used in the past for brainstorming sessions, when someone would take notes on a notebook PC. We’d usually leave most errors in the notes as is at the time, and fix them later. That same approach works well with the Pocket PC.

The fact that I can share my notes so easily has impressed my teammates greatly. Not to mention my superiors. At one meeting, my manager happened to sit next to me, and he seemed pretty interested in my note taking activities. At one point, his curiosity got the best of him and he was watching very closely. Then he said to me,’The handwriting recognition looks pretty impressive. Did you replace your handheld with a Tablet PC?"

To which I replied, "No, this is still my Pocket PC. It just so happens that it can do a lot of the things that a Tablet PC can."

I’ll remind him of how my Pocket PC is improving my productivity at my next review.

Conclusions
The description of my real world use of Calligrapher pretty much says it all. It’s fast and accurate enough to serve as a viable alternative to note taking with pen and paper, and I don’t have to transcribe the notes afterward. One key point… since different people can have different levels of success with Calligrapher’s recognition, it’s extremely important that you take advantage of the fully functional trial version of Calligrapher (good for 30 days) before you buy. For me, it works well enough that I can say that with Calligrapher, handwriting recognition has finally come of age.