Carol and I challenged each other on the SmartGlobe. Let's just say that I need to brush up on my geography skills!

Even though the SmartGlobe is for kids, I had a blast playing several of the games. I think it's such a great gift for both kids and parents. I found it really easy to use: you just take the pen and point it at a country, state, or city. And I love the fact how your globe stays current via downloads. You'll learn a lot more this way than from textbooks, that's for sure. Schools should consider buying SmartGlobes for their classrooms because I think more kids would get a kick out of learning geography this way, instead of memorizing capitals.

I wish my smart globe would actually fully update. It hangs every time with a unknown runtime error. Customer support for Oregon scientific is nonexistent. Unfortunate because this could be a great product. I'm on my second.

Make a product that works! It will not update for me at all. I'm not impressed.

I have spent the past 5 hours trying to update the "Pen". There is no product support for this product. If you purchase, don't purchase it for the upgrade feature. If it breaks you're on your own.

I have tried to update the SmartPen for a couple of days now and I get stuck at formatting the pen. It hangs up near the end and uses all my CPU. Talked to support and they don't know anything. They said it sounds like my SmartPen was bad and they would put my name and address on someone's desk and would probably end up sending me a new one. This was after waiting for about 50 minutes on the phone to speak to someone. We'll see if they actually get back to me and send me a new SmartPen.

I am so disappointed with this product's support.

I've emailed the company executives since the technical support people are useless.

I'm not letting OS of the hook by returning the product.

I paid for the update option, they better make it work.

I am also having the same roblem - hangs up when writing to pen; takes 99% CPU and renders pen un-usable!
Eric from support keeps telling me to try on another pc. I am on the 6th pc and just realised the guy has clearly ran out of ideas.
Martin
South Africa

Failed pen resurrected!! Now works perfectly!!

Hello, I too have experienced the same issue that many of you detailed above, including what appeared to be corrupted pen memory that prevented communications with my computer. Today, however, i was able to bring my pen back to life. before I explain that, I have one comment regarding OS customer service (Eric). My experience is the extreme opposite from that described above. All of my e-mail messages were responded to within a couple of days of my writing. We have had a dialog for a month, and it has been progressive. A new pen was to be on its way to me as soon as there was some available inventory. Today I wrote eric to tell him of my remedial success. here's what I told him:

Eric,

I cannot explain it, technically, but I have resurrected my pen. It is now working perfectly.

All the information that I had previously offered is/was absolutely true, however, today I decided to give it another try.

Initially, it would not work. When I turned the pen on, the red lamp came on and the speaker offered only a series of continuous clicks. Regardless, I downloaded the current SmartGlobeCA software from your site. I then changed the batteries - putting in fresh cells, even though there was no indication that the original ones were weak. They may not have been, but...who knows.

I connected the pen to the computer and launched the program, and all proceeded well - just as it had prior to the initial failure in late December. The process flowed through to completion. Without disconnecting the pen, I re-launched the program. I expected that it would compare the pen with the data base and determine that no update would be necessary, however it proceeded to download the news, etc again, and then cycle through the update. When it was completed (this second time), I tested it with the globe. I was able to confirm that it updated by hearing the latest news that it offered - it referenced an event that I knew to have occurred in January.

That's it. I've no explanation, except the story above. My pen is now working to my satisfaction.

I thank you for the attention that you have given to me on this matter.

I have seen a web site where people have written of the same problems that I have experienced. I will try to post my "repair" to that. Hopefully, others may also find resolution.

-----

And there it is. One additional comment, not previously shared with Eric - I am using Windows XP running under Parallels on one of my Macintosh computers. I didn't tell OS because many times, that is pointed to, by other Windows-software providers, as the reason why something-Windows doesn't work properly, when it is never the reason. I am not suggesting that OS would have followed that path, but I knew it to be irrelevant and decided not to add fog to the issue. The failure occurred under this configuration, and the success occurred under this configuration.

Good luck to those of you who are having similar difficulties.

Brian

Canada

Further to the above. I am the Brian who resurrected his pen as described above. This evening I was asked to fix another pen that had similarly failed. It was a frustrating exercise, with the process getting hung at various stages; resulting in a requirement to reformat and try again. This went on for a couple of hours and I almost gave up. It didn't matter whether there were batteries in the pen or not. I did wonder, however, if it was a power issue - perhaps there wasn't quite enough from the computer USB port, so I pulled out an old powered USB hub. Getting the computer to recognize the pen took a few connects/disconnects, but finally the software was able to recognize that the pen required formatting (again). I started down that path and watched that reach the conclusion. Since several of the previous attempts had gone through the process o download the new data from the OS site, it must have been retained in the computer, for after the formatting was complete, I was asked if I wanted to load up the pen. Away it went, well beyond the points of the earlier attempts, and ran through to completion. Note that the pen did not contain batteries throughout this exercise. After receiving notice that the upload had succeeded, I disconnected the pen from the USB cable, and inserted the batteries that had come with the product. Pressing the power button resulted in the OS greeting, which was quickly interrupted. After a couple of those, I replaced the batteries with fresh AAA cells, and the pen now works perfectly.

I cannot remember if I had used a hub in the repair noted in my original message, but it is quite possible as I had been experimenting with a different hub for a different application at the time and I could well have connected through it without recognizing that the hub may have been an asset to the repair.

Note that this was still my Mac running XP under Parallels.

Good luck with your repairs.

I also got stuck in "formatting smartpen" about 12 times. Read Brian's note above. Tried without batteries - no good. Installed onto another PC- still without batteries- and it worked!!! How bizarre. My kid uses this about an hour each day, so I've ordered a spare pen. I will always make sure I have a working pen before updating the other...

Day One: I also have problems installing on my PC (Windows XP Pro fully patched) tried every possible scenario and combination I could think of. It was always getting stuck at uploading to the pen then at 1:00am I decided to call it quits for the day and give it another go the next day with a fresh set of batteries.
Day Two: Replaced batteries tried shorter USB cable, still no luck. Then I tried one more time before returning the SmartGlobe back to the shop with the ripped box in hand. Pulled out the old laptop with Windows 2000, installed software as per instructions, attached pen, formatted pen, downloaded software again (lost count how many times, download quota blown out, thanks SmartGlobe). Formatted pen again. More downloading of updates and transferring data to pen then installing. I was blown away. It worked.
I think SmartGlobe should put some funding into developing new drivers for Windows XP let alone Windows Vista (who knows if anyone has been there!)
Great product shame about the awkwardness of the software