• When you click on the selected shape in the Letter Shape Selector it will redraw the letter showing the direction in which you should move your pen. The direction of the pen strokes is as important as the shape.

• Try to write bigger characters. The minimum recommended size of your handwritten characters should be equivalent to size 16 (or bigger) of the Tahoma font (To get an idea how big it is, run the Pocket Word, select the Tahoma, size 16 font and write "something").

• Upper case characters should be at least twice as big (or bigger) as the lower case characters.

• Use a full sized pen stylus.

• Use a block capital letter to start a capitalized word.

Conclusion
I probably have never taken so much time to review a product as I have with this amazing program. In the process, I have attempted to explore every nook and cranny of the application, and the deeper I got, the more impressed I became. Starting with my initial disappointment/frustration to a growing respect and ultimate admiration of this incredible program, I can now give it two thumbs up with some authority and recommend it to readers enthusiastically.

One thing that you may find strange is that some of the important features do not work in the trial version. I feel strongly that the trial version should be a full working version. I also wish that text conversion were on the fly in PhatPad as it is in other applications, but that's really a PhatPad issue, not a CalliGrapher problem. To give it a test drive, go to http://www.phatware.com.

OUR RATING: 4 of 5

David Gewirtz is the author of How To Save Jobs and Where Have All The Emails Gone? For more than 20 years, he has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com and you can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/DavidGewirtz.