25 Best Back-to-School Gadgets

Taking notes during class — even with the most rapid-fire professor — just got a whole lot easier. The Livescribe Pulse smartpen may look like your average pen (it's about the size of a Sharpie), but it also packs in a voice recorder and up to 2 GB of storage. So far so good, but here's the really cool part: not only does the Pulse remember everything you've written in digital form (you can sync your handwritten notes onto your PC or Mac and even share them online), it also keeps track of whatever was being said while you were scribbling a detail — just tap a word to hear all of what Professor Motormouth was saying at that particular moment. What's the trick? The Pulse smartpen's infrared sensor uses the tiny dots on the custom (and required) Livescribe notebook paper as reference points.

Price: $199, plus $13 to $25 each for the "dot" notebooks