Who actually takes notes on an Elipsa / Sage?

[christianbk]

Tried an Elipsa when it first came out, had issues, and returned it.

I own a Sage for my primary ereader. And the past week or so, tried to use it as a note-taking device to see if I could have one device that can help two different ways. It's an unfair comparison, as I use a ReMarkable 2 as a note taker, but I was hoping the Sage might be somewhat functional for me in a pinch.

After about a week of use, I wanted to see if anyone actually takes notes with these devices?! Especially the Sage, as it's currently what I'm trying to use. What I've experienced:

• Terrible writing latency in both the basic and advanced notebooks
• Terrible handwiritng to text conversion
• Unresponsive screen, resulting in a six quadrant refresh after about five seconds
• Battery life in the couple of hours

Did Kobo ever test note taking at all here? Or is it simply a feature of it's here... but the device shouldn't be used that way. It's certainly indicated that note taking is something possible with the Sage according to the product page, but I don't see how anyone would think it a horrible experience.

I was really hoping the advanced notebook functionality would be better, as some of the features seem pretty nifty. If you are someone who does use the advanced notebook feature, can you share any tips to not only make it bearable but somewhat useful?

[jospalau]

I agree with you in everything about taking notes with the Sage. I have been using a Likebook Ares to take notes and I decided to keep taking notes with it after trying the Sage which is really nice to read.


Sent from my CPH2021 using Tapatalk

[Quoth]

The Sage & Elipsa Advanced note taking work fine with suitable FW versions. Some FW versions are fine on epub reading and rubbish with Advanced Notebooks.

I got the Elipsa mainly to proof check for any format errors on PDFs for POD, but I liked the Advanced Notebook (the Basic is just a simple sketch pad) so got the Sage. The Advanced Notebook is using Nebo, which is a positively rated app for Android and Apple tablets that have true digitisers.

I'm not seeing any latency issue on Sage with 4.32.x FW. Both 4.33.x versions are useless and some earlier versions are.

I've two screen full of Advanced Notebooks now.

Certainly there is not really any integration between the features used in Advanced Notebooks (eWriter) and ereading of PDFs or epubs as the "annotation" using the stylus on them is only image doodles.

Also odd that BT keyboard works in ePub annotation window but only does page scrolling on the Advanced Notebook.

It does seem like a Work in Progress, but hugely better than the reMarkable, which I got cheap 2nd hand just for wife to read PDFs. It's got no native handwriting, shape or maths conversion like Sage / Elipsa, just a rather nice artpad app. Also zero library features, purely a file browser.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by christianbk

After about a week of use, I wanted to see if anyone actually takes notes with these devices?! Especially the Sage, as it's currently what I'm trying to use. What I've experienced:

• Terrible writing latency in both the basic and advanced notebooks
• Terrible handwiritng to text conversion
• Unresponsive screen, resulting in a six quadrant refresh after about five seconds
• Battery life in the couple of hours

Quoth’s comment is already a good response to your basic question, but I’d like to add that I take a ton of notes. I don’t do much PDF markup, but I’m constantly scrawling notes in the side of my ebooks using my Elipsa. I love it.

• Latency: I do notice latency when writing notes in an Advanced Notebook. It takes a bit of practice, but I can now hum along at a good clip while writing despite being ahead of the rendering. I’d like to see writing/rendering parity, however.
• I’ve had no issues with handwriting recognition aside from the occasional error.
• Refreshing is an issue that I hope Kobo adjusts in a future firmware update, especially when editing text. One needs to wait for the page to refresh to rework an area. Kobo is still tweaking things, though. Handwriting speed is already much better than when the Elipsa came on the scene.
• I’ve heard others complain here about poor battery life on the Sage. I don’t have short battery life issues within hours on my Elipsa. I’d recommend researching that topic in the forum. There are copious discussions that might be helpful.
• I’d suggest changing your settings to swipe only. I have found that enabling tap commands (the default setting) causes issues when I’m taking notes. My hand is constantly causing the pages to turn when I’m writing a note with tapping enabled.
• As Quoth mentioned above, the Notebooks are Nebo compatible. They are saved as .nebo files in the mounted root directory. I’d recommend saving those files onto your computer for backup. Unlike annotations, the notebooks are not restored in the event of a crash. Perhaps one day soon, davidfor will add automatic notebook backups to his Kobo Utilities to make that process easier.

I haven’t used a reMarkable, so I can’t compare the two. However, I do enjoy using my Elipsa for note taking. The stylus battery lasts forever. I love scribbling notes here and there when reading. The tech is a year old now, so I expect Kobo to continue improving the writing experience with firmware updates as they’ve been doing.

[Quoth]

Sage battery life on 4.32 seems OK, and my nearly 10 yo granddaughter is writing and sketching her stories on her Sage as well as reading. She knows to use Export and Docx to have somewhat of a backup till someone else copies the files to their laptop.

The Sage and Elipsa have improved since release and since I got both.

It's using Nebo and the free version for the iPad (needs Pencil or 3rd party one at 1/8th of price) has less features, maybe only plain text export. The full iOS version of Nebo has more features. Saw the iPad free version yesterday.

[DarkRookie2]

I do with my Sage for two things.

Video games (when trying to remember a code or a multi step crafting recipe.) and sketching out rough DnD maps when we play.

[pickyaxe]

I really tried using my Elipsa for note-taking (had it since launch), but it's incredibly slow and inefficient. So much that I've ended up also carrying a paper notebook in my bag.

[ab78727]

I'm using my Elipsa for note taking - it is now my only eink device with notetaking capabiity. The third party stylus from Renaisser really helps things due to the felt tip plus the built-in battery. I don't find the lag too bad for simple notebooks though of course my old Remarkable 2 was the best by far for writing.

[Quoth]

But the Remarkable (Original or 2) has no native conversion. It's just a sketch pad. Both have only 6 G storage (vs 32 G).
I don't find lag on the Elipsa or Sage any worse than my original reMarkable. The only differences I can see of mk2 (vs original):
* Glass rather than plastic writing surface, reviewers say it's slippier
* Slightly faster CPU (maybe more RAM, but that's irrelevant)
* No prior, home and next buttons

It's only usable easily one PDF at at time via a Web browser on host laptop.
No library management, only a file browser.
Only actually PDFs for imported content, but crops nicely. You need the simple one click KOReader install on Elipsa to have decent PDF functionality (KOReader can be installed on reMarkable, but it's more complex).
Both reMarkable models have apparently identical FW features according to maker.

My granddaughter (nearly 10) was showing me her reading activity and all her notebooks on the Sage this morning. She uses both kinds. I put about 1000 pd books from Gutenberg on it and she takes care to export any time she adds to a notebook. It's replaced games on Nintendo, PS5 and Amazon Fire as well as Netflix videos. She was writing and sketching in a paper notebook but prefers the Sage as it's easier to work on different things and find them. On holiday now till end August/start September

[tucos9]

I have recently acquired my Elipsa.

I had to perform a manual factory reset, as instructed by Kobo's technical support, because the Advanced Notes couldn't be opened due to an error downloading the "handwriting recognition resources". Now the Advanced Notes work, and am mostly content with them. I had considered returning it, but now that it is fully functional I am enjoying it overall.

It's a bit disappointing that you cannot take scribble notes when annotating highlights, and can only use the virtual keyboard for that, or scribble highlights over .epubs

I am a programmer with 4 years of experience in C++ and 2 years in Qt. I would like to take on a pet project to implement such functionality within the Elipsa if that's possible. It is yet unclear to me if KOReader or Plato would be capable of such features, or if Nickel itself is moddable like that. If anyone has any pointers towards developer resources for Kobo to get me started and bootstrapped, they'd be much appreciated

[Quoth]

If you have an iOS or Android with a Digitiser you can get a free version of Nebo, which has LESS features than Sage/Elipsa writing (which uses Nebo). The full Nebo isn't expensive and seems to have slightly more features than the version Kobo bought in.
You do need a screen with digitiser and active pencil/pen. A cheap (€20) 3rd party Cisicle "pencil" works as well as the official Apple pencil (€130!) and works with Nebo on an iPad about 2 years old. Some Android tablets have digitisers as do recent MS Surface.

So I'm thinking that's why it's like two gadgets in the box. On the iPad you can't do anything more integrated than the Elipsa. The Nebo app adds no functionality to the Apple sketch app. If you search devmodeon on the Elipsa or Sage you get the old sketch pad, which works in dumb fashion with the Pen, just like scribbles on a PDF. Search devmodeoff to hide all the nearly useless beta features in More. They are on by default on my original Kobo H2O and I never found them any use.

The Nebo Basic Notebook is a multpage sketch pad with pen styles and pressure (unlike Kobo Sketch) and exports as png or PDF. I've used it once. I use the Advanced notepad.

[kobo.]

Originally Posted by tucos9

I have recently acquired my Elipsa.

I had to perform a manual factory reset, as instructed by Kobo's technical support, because the Advanced Notes couldn't be opened due to an error downloading the "handwriting recognition resources". Now the Advanced Notes work, and am mostly content with them. I had considered returning it, but now that it is fully functional I am enjoying it overall.

It's a bit disappointing that you cannot take scribble notes when annotating highlights, and can only use the virtual keyboard for that, or scribble highlights over .epubs

I am a programmer with 4 years of experience in C++ and 2 years in Qt. I would like to take on a pet project to implement such functionality within the Elipsa if that's possible. It is yet unclear to me if KOReader or Plato would be capable of such features, or if Nickel itself is moddable like that. If anyone has any pointers towards developer resources for Kobo to get me started and bootstrapped, they'd be much appreciated

Best of luck!!

Libra 2 has a beta drawing option available, so I wonder if it would be possible for it to have similar Sage/Elipsa features as well?

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by kobo.

Libra 2 has a beta drawing option available, so I wonder if it would be possible for it to have similar Sage/Elipsa features as well?

No digitiser HW. AFAIK all the Kobos (not sure about Mini) have that app. It even can be enabled on Sage and use the Stylus/Pen.

Only the Sage and Elipsa have the MS surface compatible digitiser built in to interact with the special pen.

Kobo also bought in the "Advanced Notebook", it's the Nebo app. Hence the only stylus function outside that is the dumb scribbles.

[Barty]

I would be interested in a sage version without the note taking feature. It adds weight, cost, reduces screen contrast, is half baked and not very good for note taking. Seems like a feature to fill a checkbox that few people use satisfactorily

[Quoth]

It's unlikely to affect screen contrast and weight increase is negligible. The pen is a separate purchase.

Every iPad (different system) and MS Surface (same tech) has had a digitiser layer for some time. It's usually under the active screen.