So i got a convertible notebook. What that means is the screen swivels around 180deg, folds down, and turns in to a tablet that you can write on. I think they could help a lot of people here so i'll give a brief rundown of the capabilities of the system i'm using.
Since i hate carrying things, i was looking at 14" notebooks as a compromise, but then when i saw the 12" ones, the difference in size was substantial enough that i didn't want to consider anything else. The tablet functionality was just an extra for me. I didn't start off looking for a tablet. There are tablets with better functionality than mine, but I was originally only looking to spend around 1100 for this thing and ended up spending around 1500. (CDN)
I must say that after a weekend of playing with it. It is awesome. Anyone that finds themselves taking lots of notes, or recording meetings, or that has lots of documents they'd like to pull together in to one place, should definitely consider getting a tablet or convertible notebook. It's ideal for students, lawyers, or anyone that writes a lot and has lots of different papers from all over that they'd like to organize a bit better.
The software:
I'm using Windows Vista and MS OneNote 2007. Vista is important because it incorporates new tech to make life with tablets a lot better. It's got great handwriting recognition that can be trained per-user. Anywhere you can use a mouse or a keyboard, you can do input with a pen and it's very easy.
The real treat is OneNote 2007 though. For those that have never used it, and you probably havent if you don't have a tablet, it enables to organize your documents in to a notebook structure. So you could have notebooks for each case, or class. You could then subdivide each notebook in to section groups. Your Roman history class might contain section groups for your lecture notes and essays. Each section group can then hold individual sections, which are themselves containers for the actual pages you work with and add notes to. You can setup the hierarchy however you want.
You can write notes out by hand, type them, copy & paste and import the content from other sources. So if you've got a set of Powerpoint slides you'd normally print and then write all over, you can instead import it in to your OneNote page and write all over it. That way it will be stored in an appropriate place with all other related documents. Also, your handwriting becomes indexed and searchable. No more flipping through pages trying to find that little memo you'd written to yourself. You can also convert your handwriting to text if you choose to.
Another REALLY cool feature is integrated audio and video recording capability. You can be in a meeting or lecture and just hit the record button from within onenote and it will timestamp the recording and add it to the appropriate page. This makes it super easy to relate the audio files to their accompanying notes. If you start a new pages, you can start a new recording that will be associated with it. You can also INdEX your recordings. That's right, you can do a text search of your recordings.
Another neat thing is that it has Outlook integration. You can create todo lists or tasks within onenote by using special tags that will automatically add it to your outlook tasks as well! I haven't gotten too in to the tagging system yet, but in short it makes it easier to find things that you'll want to come back to later.
One last really neat feature is snipping. Think of this as printscreen without the annoying mspaint job afterwards. You can hit the Windows key + s and it gives you a cursor to copy from any window you like. It grabs text and images, or even just parts of the image if you don't select the whole thing. it then sends it straight in to onenote. This is a great feature for research. For example you could create a bibliography section and save yourself all the writing an annotating by using this feature.
The hardware:
The main thing when choosing a tablet is active vs. passive digitizer. An active digitizer uses spatial information from the pen to determine what you're writing. A passive digitizer is just a regular old touchscreen. Active is better because it's more accurate and you don't have to apply constant pressure. Writing with it is more natural.
Having said that, active models are about 4-500 more expensive. It's definitel worth the price if yuo're a prolific note-taker though.I'm not, and i was already going over-budget for what was just supposed to be a computer to connect to work with in case something went wrong while i was in class. For active you're looking at 1700+. Passive can be had for as little as 1300.
Anyway, that's it. I hope some others decide to give them a try. I don't think i'll ever go back to taking paper notes again.
Since i hate carrying things, i was looking at 14" notebooks as a compromise, but then when i saw the 12" ones, the difference in size was substantial enough that i didn't want to consider anything else. The tablet functionality was just an extra for me. I didn't start off looking for a tablet. There are tablets with better functionality than mine, but I was originally only looking to spend around 1100 for this thing and ended up spending around 1500. (CDN)
I must say that after a weekend of playing with it. It is awesome. Anyone that finds themselves taking lots of notes, or recording meetings, or that has lots of documents they'd like to pull together in to one place, should definitely consider getting a tablet or convertible notebook. It's ideal for students, lawyers, or anyone that writes a lot and has lots of different papers from all over that they'd like to organize a bit better.
The software:
I'm using Windows Vista and MS OneNote 2007. Vista is important because it incorporates new tech to make life with tablets a lot better. It's got great handwriting recognition that can be trained per-user. Anywhere you can use a mouse or a keyboard, you can do input with a pen and it's very easy.
The real treat is OneNote 2007 though. For those that have never used it, and you probably havent if you don't have a tablet, it enables to organize your documents in to a notebook structure. So you could have notebooks for each case, or class. You could then subdivide each notebook in to section groups. Your Roman history class might contain section groups for your lecture notes and essays. Each section group can then hold individual sections, which are themselves containers for the actual pages you work with and add notes to. You can setup the hierarchy however you want.
You can write notes out by hand, type them, copy & paste and import the content from other sources. So if you've got a set of Powerpoint slides you'd normally print and then write all over, you can instead import it in to your OneNote page and write all over it. That way it will be stored in an appropriate place with all other related documents. Also, your handwriting becomes indexed and searchable. No more flipping through pages trying to find that little memo you'd written to yourself. You can also convert your handwriting to text if you choose to.
Another REALLY cool feature is integrated audio and video recording capability. You can be in a meeting or lecture and just hit the record button from within onenote and it will timestamp the recording and add it to the appropriate page. This makes it super easy to relate the audio files to their accompanying notes. If you start a new pages, you can start a new recording that will be associated with it. You can also INdEX your recordings. That's right, you can do a text search of your recordings.
Another neat thing is that it has Outlook integration. You can create todo lists or tasks within onenote by using special tags that will automatically add it to your outlook tasks as well! I haven't gotten too in to the tagging system yet, but in short it makes it easier to find things that you'll want to come back to later.
One last really neat feature is snipping. Think of this as printscreen without the annoying mspaint job afterwards. You can hit the Windows key + s and it gives you a cursor to copy from any window you like. It grabs text and images, or even just parts of the image if you don't select the whole thing. it then sends it straight in to onenote. This is a great feature for research. For example you could create a bibliography section and save yourself all the writing an annotating by using this feature.
The hardware:
The main thing when choosing a tablet is active vs. passive digitizer. An active digitizer uses spatial information from the pen to determine what you're writing. A passive digitizer is just a regular old touchscreen. Active is better because it's more accurate and you don't have to apply constant pressure. Writing with it is more natural.
Having said that, active models are about 4-500 more expensive. It's definitel worth the price if yuo're a prolific note-taker though.I'm not, and i was already going over-budget for what was just supposed to be a computer to connect to work with in case something went wrong while i was in class. For active you're looking at 1700+. Passive can be had for as little as 1300.
Anyway, that's it. I hope some others decide to give them a try. I don't think i'll ever go back to taking paper notes again.
