Once upon a time we dreamed of eating meal-replacement pills while flying our cars to see a holographic movie. While so much of the future's useful technology has failed to materialise, there's one field that has come on in leaps and bounds like an untethered spacewalker, and that's handwriting-to-typing. Finally you can grab hold of what looks like a normal pen, write as usual, then download everything on to a computer as images and text. If it wasn't so ruddy simple, you'd think it was witchcraft.

How the magic works...


Here's how the whole caboodle works. Just use the Z Pen like a regular pen - it's got an ink cartridge in it, so you'll be scribbling as normal. The technology is tucked away in the pen in the form of a transmitter that will beam your every stroke to a waiting USB memory drive, included with the kit. It's a kind of clever computer brain that, once clipped on to your writing pad, soaks up every little movement of the pen and holds it safe for when you need to see it again.

Because all brains like to share, the Z Pen's memory drive is a doddle to connect to your computer and easily spills out your writing and drawing. You'll have plenty to transfer - the Z Pen's batteries last for 75 hours and can handle up to 1GB of information - that's literally thousands of pages! Just link the memory drive to a computer via USB and download: the ink-to-digital software is all included, and can cope with 17 different languages. It's like having your own protocol droid at hand!


And when it's all safely downloaded, pick out any drawings from your writing, and at the click of a button you can convert all the scruffy script into tidy, organised type instead. The software you need is all stored on the device, so you can link it to any computer you like. Joined-up writing or ANGRY WRITING IN CAPITALS is all a breeze for this baby - you'll be fizzing with creativity just as soon as you open the box. Either that, or you'll spend the whole time writing 'bum' and watching it turn magically to typescript...