Techzi

Saturday, February 03, 2007

February 3 - Inka Pen

Today, I went over to my local post office and picked up my free 'commercial sample' Inka pen, courtesy of InkaCorp president, Greg Adelman, who agreed to send me the Titanium Pen free of charge! Pity about silly EU customs though. I ended up shelling out over $20 anyway. No matter... I'm so impressed with the product though, $20 seems a small price to pay, for this top-notch Titainum-Inka! Shipping?

Impressive stuff. Global Priority Mail! I'm glad to see that Inka treat journalists like myself with the same respect they give their customers. So what was in the package? The usual... Oh, ya' know.

One commercially packaged Titanium Inka Pen with instructions on use.
One Inka Pen mini-poster with full details of the product.
Greg's spiffy little business card (very swish)!
Oh... and one purple paperclip!

"But David! This is a tech blog! Surely a pen is a pen, no?" I have to admit that I would have agreed with you before trying out the pen myself, but seriously, this thing is fancy! To show what I mean, I've included photos. The pen can write upside-down, underwater, and even in my freezer... Crazy stuff!

How's that tech related? Aside from being geeky in it's own-right, the pen also converts into a stylus, which works brilliantly on my PDA, Nintendo DS, and other devices I tested. Although you may think that this is just an un-needed fancy addition, believe me, it's not! How many times have you gone on holiday, then realized half-way over the Atlantic that you left your DS stylus at home? What I've done, is clip the pen onto my keys, using the handy keyring provided. The stainless steel pen comes with a standard yellow Delrin stylus nib, but the titanium version is a pale, mossy green. Now I know that I have a spare where-ever I go. It works darn good too, sliding glossily over surfaces with ease and precision. "Won't it be hard to take it everywhere?" It's not exactly hard... Afterall, the thing only measures 8CM (Just over 3"!) when slotted together! Of course, if that's too small, you can quickly switch around the ends, and you have yourself a fully functional, full length, quickly adaptable 12.7CM (5") pen!

What do I like most about it though? The fact that I know I can still jot down notes for my latest entrepreneurial adventures when I'm drowning upside down in sub-zero temperatures. It's a comforting thing to know... Really. You wouldn't understand unless you'd been in that situation though. ;)

Borrowing pens is a thing of the past, and having tried out the pen for a while now, I've found it invaluable. If I had one gripe with the pen though, I'd have to say it was the fact that you can't have yourself a full-length stylus, like you can with the pen. Kudos to the guys at Inka Corp though... I never thought I'd fall for a pen! Below you can see me having fun, writing with the pen underwater, in my own private coral reef scuba tank (aka. The bathroom sink).