Unimatic Engineers has launched DigiMemo A501, an electronic clipboard that lets you handwrite notes and diagrams onto a standard A5 notepad, then store them digitally on your PC or laptop.

Once digitised you can treat your notes like any electronic file: storing, viewing, organising, editing and even emailing them to colleagues. Further, the notes can be used in conjunction with My Script Notes - a handwriting recognition programme that will convert them into a Word document.

The DigiMemo is as portable and easy to use as a conventional clipboard, so is ideal for professional computer users on the move. Teachers, hospital staff, plant engineers, surveyors and field operatives,  indeed anyone who does not sit in front of a PC all day will find DigiMemo familiar and natural to use, and far more convenient than a laptop.

Another advantage is that DigiMemo can be used by several people virtually simultaneously. For instance it could be passed around the table at a design meeting for various people to add sketches.

Ordinary paper is used with DigiMemo, while the pen' functions as both an ink pen to produce hard copy and as a digitising stylus. When you want to download your pages, you simply connect the DigiMemo to a PC via the USB port and save the pages as a book file (e-file).

"Not only is the DigiMemo simple to use, but there is also a massive psychological advantage," says Trupti Patel, Unimatic's Marketing Manager. "It's a known fact that you remember hand written notes for a long time, but typed notes are forgotten almost immediately. So when writing onto DigiMemo you are reinforcing your short and long term memory of the notes you are taking. The efficiency gain is quite astonishing.