Hitachi Maxell has announced that it will begin marketing the Digital Pen Set (Starter Kit for PC), its first consumer digital pen product, on July 1. The Anoto-compatible product combines the ease of use of pen and paper with the capabilities of digital devices, such as a PC. When writing with the digital pen on a sheet of paper with an Anoto pattern printed, the handwritten information (both text and graphics data) is recorded and stored in the pen. The digital information is then sent to a PC to be used with business applications, such as Word and PowerPoint.

The USB1.2/2.0-enabled digital pen measures 152x23x20mm and weighs 38g. It comes with 1MB of memory, large enough to store 40 A4 pages of documents, and operates on a polymer lithium ion battery, which delivers a continuous recording time of two hours on a single recharge.

The product will be available at Maxell's online shopping website m@Mart (www.maxell-mart.com), and is open-priced.