LeapFrog FLY Fusion Pentop Computer

OK, so I have now been using the Fly Fusion product for some time and tried using all of the included software apps and handwriting recognition features.

In short, this product does do what it says in a well designed casing to boot.


Some additional notes:


Pros:

-Cool Product with a nice physical design.

-Very light and generally having good ergonomics.

-For print-writing, great handwriting recognition as fast as you can write.

-Fast interface, you can make the unit respond faster which is great.

-Written page upload is a snap, and the recognition engine is transparent to the user, nice.

-Ink-tip retraction. This is a common flaw in other Anoto pens. Good work including this feature!



Cons.

-The paper is 8.5x11, wish I could get 6x9 pads for business use.

-Even thought the optional paper pad has 160 pages, something feels wrong about forking over nearly a dozen bills to get it. The paper needs to be much cheaper if this product is marketed to children and young kids.

-It would be great of the unit could translate entire phrases instead of one word at a time. I guess you need the translation pro package, it's cheap enough.

-The desktop software has an online requirement since it appears to log you into the leapfrog internet website. I'm not online all the time with my laptop, this might be a problem at non-wifi hotels and such.

-Don't be fooled by the other reviews, cursive handwriting does not work at all. I got about 20% accuracy and that is horrible. I used to have the Crosspad XP and this was a wonderfully accurate product because it had handwriting recognition training built into the software from IBM. I think leapfrog should consider having the software go through some handwriting recognition training with the user to improve accuracy. I don't write in print unless I have to, this is major problem.

-Not to compare much, but the Livescribe Pulse lets you print your own paper now. This needs to be included into all Anoto pen software products. I know the Pulse costs more, but that's just because it has more memory and audio recording. The software should be able to print out my registered notebook again on a postscript printer. I have tried this with the Livescribe pulse software, and it works great! Too bad the Pulse paper does not work with the Fly, DARN!

-The ergonomics are defiantly much better then the Fly pen 1.0. Still, I can't help but indicate that I still could not see myself writing anything lengthy since the tip of the pen is too fat. I could never get used to those fat pencils back in elementary school.

-I know I said the Ink-tip retraction was nice and it is. But I noticed I had to go back and forth to not write on my notebook cover. Retracting back and forth gets old after a while and wonder how long before the twist-tip breaks. It should have been made into a push button retraction feature like a cheap 5 cent pen; Or Leapfrog should have included the most common pen commands on every page, like on the Livescribe Pulse paper.

-Printing Flycons and using the general interface notation system requires using large symbols which consume paper fast; You will go through your included 25 page notebook quickly. Ugg.



Note: On the picture on the back of the Fly Fusion box, someone is writing an essay with the pen, but they have a keyboard 6 inches in front of them. This is not a good way to sell this product [remove the keyboard form the picture]. I can type 100 time faster than I can write.

It's fun and seems like an amazing idea for the first week and then you get bored of it. However, I am a teenager. I'm sure younger kids could get a lot of use from it and have fun with it for a very long time, but I got bored of it after about one or two weeks. Some of the apps are kinda fun, which can greatly add to its entertainment value.

We purchased this for our 8 year old's birthday. Our purpose was two-fold. One, we need him to improve his penmanship, and we thought if he could see where the computer wasn't picking up his writing as text, it would show him where to improve. Secondly, we were going out of town on a business trip and were going to use the pentop to e-mail his written school and homework to his teacher (we got her approval with a test page first).

I was a bit concerned that since you could use the pen to give you answers to math problems, he would take the "easy way out" and have the pen do the work for him. However, since it is a bit akward (due to size) for his hands yet, he did not want to write with it any more than he had to. Secondly, since he is a little young, and had a bit of difficulty holding the pen, sometimes he managed to cover the small camera in the end of the pen with his fingers, and therefore the pentop did not record what he had written, causing me to have to re-trace his writings in order for the pen to capture what was written. Minor inconvenience for me, major headache for him as he got a little frustrated.

On the first installation of the pentop software to my computer, I am not sure what happened, but no matter how hard we tried, the desktop software would not recognize anything that was written in the 2nd and 3rd notebooks, only the first one. I called tech support for LeapFrog, thinking I had a defective pentop. They went thru all the STUPID scripts, even though we explained to them that we had gone thru all of this on our own. Not once did they ever suggest that I might need to repair the installation of the desktop software (although I finally tried that on my own accord and it worked perfectly.)

One other issue I have is there isn't an easy way to transfer notebook pages that have already been loaded to the desktop onto another computer. Once again, I called tech support and they told me supposedly where the files were located - WRONG!. I managed to locate them myself by searching for "fly" on my computer - they were stored under the "common user" in Windows XP. Once located and copied, they did show up on my new laptop's FlyPen desktop application, problem solved, but with absolutely no help from LeapFrog's tech support.

All in all, this is a fun toy and a fair learning tool. Tech support is useless, so if you have no problems with the pen, it's great. If you do, beware, because you won't get any type of useful information from LeapFrog.

I really think this product "saved" me. I am a full-time college student who attends night classes and who works 40 hours and five days a week. I had been having trouble getting my assignments done until this nifty little thing came out.

This product saved me because it really cut my time. I got my assignments done so quickly that I actually got to relax!!!

I do recommend this item for not just for Middle/High School students. But also for College.

There are a few drawbacks, but not terrible.

1. You can't use normal paper, you have to use specially designed digital paper (160 pages). Cost around $8.00 usually.

2. If you make a mistake while writing, you can't fix it. But I have solved that problem by just adding to the right after the undesired word "(Mistake - Change to "whatever word(s)")." After transfered to PC, I just change it while editing the typed text.

3. Sometimes the computer can't read your handwriting. You will have to go through and make sure that its correct after downloaded. Which is what you should do anyway even if you typed the whole thing.

4. FYI: NO MACS

We bought this for our nephew (12 years old). Since then, he does all his classwork in the FLY notebook and his handwriting has improved drastically. He tries really hard to write neat so that the words are recognized (really cool for us because we sound like a broken record "you need to write neater blah blah" He did it on his own). For his age we think it's great. It has it's short comings but overall the value is worth it. I recommend this for kids who are interested in computers, they will truly benefit from this toy and have fun while doing classwork/homework.