A stand alone low cost writing pad includes a rechargeable battery, a low capacity memory, a low power processor, a first pair of connectors and supports audio, video and digital ink capturing functionalities. In one aspect, network bandwidth conditions are estimated. As a result, the second communication node is enabled to select and request a preferred encoder mode for the voice encoder of the vocoder of the first communication node based on the capabilities of the voice encoder of the vocoder of the first communication node. Each demodulating finger accepts modulation parameters and a sample stream, while supplying soft symbols with indexing information so that information channels can be subsequently multiplexed into a single information channel. In the best mode, there are seven sapphire layers, with outer sapphire layers having a nominal thickness of 70.