Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What's a Good Tablet/App Combination For Note-Taking?
EmagGeek writes "My wife recently started back to school to finish her 4-year degree, and one of the things that we've been considering is procuring for her some kind of tablet that would enable her to take notes in class and save them electronically. This would obviate the need to carry around a bunch of paper, and could even be used to store e-textbooks so she doesn't have to lug 30lbs of books around campus. At minimum, she would have to be able to write freehand on the tablet with a fine-point stylus, just like she would write on paper with a pen. We've seen what we call those 'fat finger' styli and found that they are not good for fine writing. Having become frustrated with the offerings we've tried so far, I thought I would ping the Slashdot Community. Any suggestions?"
Don't even think of clicking.. goatse alert. Way to get me fired, bro
Rather than a tablet have you looked at the livescribe pens - audio + hyperlinked notes.
http://www.livescribe.com/
If handwriting is desired, I generally would recommend against an iPad. I've been using one with a stylus, and the non-intelligent screen just doesn't work well enough.
A friend of mine has a convertible X-series thinkpad, and it's great for them, with intelligent built in stylus + OneNote.
Granted, Slashdot will ignore anything you type anyhow. That said, it would be helpful to know the solutions which were insufficient. Otherwise, we'll just all post stuff you've tried (assuming the OP is reading this).
That said, I've found few things work as well at digitizing notes than the various digital paper options out there. I have a therapist client that uses it for her case notes and then an iPad for content she takes with her. I'd probably prefer the 7" form factor but by offloading the more finicky aspect, handwriting, to a dedicated medium you then have many more options for the content portability.
My client uses a DigiMemo product but there are quite a number out there with various options you might look into.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
You don't have to give up on paper. If you are also thinking of getting a printer as part of going back to school, try getting a combination printer/scanner with an auto document feeder. I'm happy with our Canon Pixma 420 (around $100). It's pretty quick to scan 50 pages to PDF.
If her handwriting is decent, it'll even OCR it for her.
If she likes 4x8 notepads, those will scan and display decently on even a Kindle.
If this cheap alternative doesn't work, you still have a decent printer and can still get something digital.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
The Lenovo tablet was designed to enable note taking, with an intelligent stylus that communicates with the tablet, and handwriting recognition software as well. My girlfriend has one and likes it quite a bit:
http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/tablet/thinkpad/
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
dont click. goatse
A pen and some paper. This method is proven to increase later recall of the subject matter. [too lazy to provide citation]
Too right. I summarise as I'm writing. Often adding my own thoughts in a column, include some small sketches, lines, arrows, etc. Generally I have found, it I take good enough notes, I don't usually have to go back over them, unless I'm a bit uncertain on something - then I use the notes (which may include such marvelous comments as "*research this item*") only as a brief review.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Get Microsoft OneNote - it has some crazy fuzzy search ability that lets it search through handwriting, text, and audio without converting the analog sources to text first. Since it doesn't first convert to text, it doesn't commit to a single representation of audio, and just searches by sound, so you don't have the issues of badly converted audio. It just lets you jump to the point(s) in the recording that match sound-wise. It also keeps track of when you take written / typed notes vs. the audio recording, so you can follow the lecture with your notes.
Then go get a MotionComputing tablet off of e-bay. They are WAYY to expensive to buy new ($2500+), but they are awesome, and can be bought off ebay for $300. Something like the LE1700 - get the detachable keyboard too if you're likely to want that. Or else, find one of the fujitsu or acer tablets. All these tablets have wacom digitizers, with a pressure sensitive pen, a right-click button on the pen, and the ability to hover, so interfaces work as well as they do with a mouse.
A Livescribe pen would let her take notes like normal and record the lecture. Plus Livescribe will also let you take notes for all your classes in one notebook, and then you can sort the notes into individual classes ion the computer. So only one notebook to carry around at a time. AND the notes can then be put into PDF or loaded into Evernote so you can read them on whatever device you want. Easy and familiar to use to record information and easy to sort it and use the notes later. I love mine for notes in meetings and my own projects!
I like the Zagg case that has a keyboard in it.
For taking notes, I like notability, because you can type and draw with a stylus. Also, if you record audio, it can sync up with the drawing/notes you took. This feature is great if you want to listen to the context of the lecture based on your notes.
Johnkoerner.com
I use an iPad with a bluetooth keyboard as well as a pen. For general lectures or notes in a class where there are few equations, the keyboard is great. For a few figures or equations I can zoom in and draw with my finger (in the same notebook app that I am typing in) or even quickly google the figures I see in the presentation and paste them directly into my notes. For my cosmology class, heavy on general relativity, I find that I can't type the equations fast enough and so switch to an app which has fantastic stylus response. Both apps allow exporting as PDF (among other things) and so for classes where I use both notebooks, I export to PDF and merge the pages in the proper order.
Apps: iNotes (typing with light figure work) and NoteShelf (fantastic pen work with Griffen pen). The 'fatness' of the stylus is not an issue and for particularly fine writing you can write in a 'zoomed' area and have it appear on the page at a smaller size. The app also recognizes your wrist as opposed to where you are writing so that you can just write directly on the page. They also have lousy screenshots on their website...the control you have over line shape is superb. Both apps allow organizing your notes in different notebooks so that you can separate out your classes.
The one thing I would still like is a better app for general note taking. iNotes is fine for typing but the drawing tools are rather limited. A previous app that I used, Notify, was fantastic until it crashed 45 minutes into a class taking all of my notes with it. Both iNotes and NoteShelf have been stable and I have never lost any notes.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And if she *is* getting a degree in the humanities, she's probably best off abandoning the education altogether, which will probably do nothing for her earning power, but leave her with enormous undischargeable debt.
Then she can afford a lot more iPads!
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.