Tablet PC Experience | The Coffeehouse

intelman

Does anyone here use a Tablet PC? How has the experience been?

75% of my classes put their lectures online, and expect you to print them out and bring them to class to annotate. The problem is, my notebooks are now exploding with papers. Lectures can be as long as 60 slides ( I do 4 per page front and back, but it is adding up). I figure a tablet PC can aid in this area.

My concern seems to be focused around the lack of resolution these devices seem to have. 1280x800 seems kinda small compared to the 1680x1050 I have now. I think I could live without the resolution if the tablet PC device could cure my paper issues.

Also any recommendations for a tablet? I was looking at the x200 from Lenovo. It has a pretty nice student discount, plus from the student store, all laptops come with a 3 year warranty.

Is it worth working some overtime and holidays to purchase this device? Or am I better off printing paper and hand annotating for all of eternity?

I'd ask on C8, but it seems to have um changed.

figuerres
???

well the tablets can be a good device. I just got one about 10 days before Win7 came out.

so far I like it.

writing recognition is amazingly good. my penmanship is really bad, like Dr. handwriting meets pre-school bad!

but it gets almost all my printing and writing i have done so far.

not sure about your annoation - are they powerpoint ?

I have not yet tried to edit powerpoint with my tablet....

but OneNote with a tablet would work really well. it will store ink and arrange clips from word and web pages and other stuff.

if a slide deck can go into OneNote then that would be the way to go i think.

reading a word file in slate mode is sweet.

screen res: they are trying to balance size, weight and battery time. most are screens almost the size of a std. sheet of paper (8.5x11inch)

and that kind of works well so far as i can see.

I have an HP TX2z with the large battery, a tad heavy but so far I like it.

Harlequin
http://twitter.com/TrueHarlequin

You probably want a convertible, and I have a pure slate, so probably won't be much help Smiley

But yeah, OneNote is awesome on Tablet. I'm coming up( in January) on the 5 year mark of having my tablet...and the 5 year mark of not printing anything ever again.

intelman

In reply to figuerres

#Oct 28th @ 9:54 AM

They are powerpoint, but what I could do is export all slides to png and then anotate from there.

(very bad handwriting with a trackpad)

Since I have no tablet device, onenote has been largely useless to me. I hate to spend the money but buying ink and paper... will stop Tongue Out

Sven Groot
My name has 9 letters. Coincidence? I think not...

In reply to intelman

#Oct 28th @ 10:01 AM

If you're using a 32 bit version of Windows, you should be able to print the presentation using the "Send to OneNote 2007" printer. That doesn't work on 64 bit unfortunately, as that printer driver is 32 bit only (apparently, there is a solution for 64 bit too).

Harlequin
http://twitter.com/TrueHarlequin

In reply to Sven Groot

#Oct 28th @ 10:07 AM

Office 2010 will have Print to OneNote on 64 bit.

spivonious

If I was still in school, I would definitely have a tablet PC with OneNote. I could have completely replaced my paper notebooks.

Now that I'm in the corporate world, I don't know if I'd get as much use out of it.

intelman

Overly positive reactions to tablets. Good good. I think I'll just choose one and budget for one. Which one...hm.

figuerres
???

In reply to intelman

#Oct 28th @ 2:10 PM

check the HP TX2 you can get one for just below a grand and its convertable and a touch screen also.

none of them are perfect but the TX2 is darn good IMHO so far.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

I strongly recommend you try-before-you-buy. My handwriting is awful, which contributes to the poor handwriting experience I get on tablet PCs (despite using one with a high-res Wacom digitizer and 120dpi display).

Whether you'll use it for handwriting is debatable, it depends on the style of your lecturer. There's another guy in a class of mine who has a TPC, from the looks of it it's a current-generation HP touchsmart, but I can't tell what kind of digitzer it is. When the term started he was always writing, but now he does what I do: type the written stuff up as it's spoken or written on the board (which is much faster than writing if you can touchtype) and only use the tablet bits for illustrations and diagrams.

Entering and editing tabular data is also faster with a mouse and keyboard than pen, since making custom selections is a pain, whereas Word's table tools are good enough.

intelman

In reply to W3bbo

#Oct 28th @ 5:45 PM

I'd definitely get a convertable, so I could type and write.

Taking notes by hand is so advantageous though. Sometimes there is an impromptu graph or parts of an equation (which are impossible to type in quickly) that have names or labels...etc.

It is hard to try before I buy. Best buy does not have a great selection of tablets, Microcenter has none out for display. Where does one "try" these things?

Bass
www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/

In reply to intelman

#Oct 28th @ 9:32 PM

I got a tablet 2 years ago, I lost the pen 1 month into owning it and never bothered to replace it since. Basically it felt like a gimmic. I type faster then I can write. Way faster. Even for math notes it was pretty useless, because I know LaTeX.

Actually in general I took notes maybe for the first two weeks of a class, because it's the "right" thing to do. But I quickly get bored of taking notes in general. Even with taking little to no notes, I only once got less then an A in any computer science course.

intelman

In reply to Bass

#Oct 28th @ 10:06 PM

Note taking methodology differs between you and I. I pretty much have to take notes.

Assuming that is the case the question is the best way of actually doing so. You apparently hated your tablet experience. Not good.

One way or another, I have to use the digital outlines of the lectures. Some things would simply take too long to draw or write down ( kind of makes you wonder how they taught before computers...).

Ion Todirel
buuu

In reply to W3bbo

#Oct 28th @ 5:45 PM

I do still think that writing on paper or a tablet is better than typing on a keyboard and storing it in "plain" text. Because handwriting is more natural and helps to retain things in memory, better, than typing, which is somehow like an auto mode and involves less brain function.

intelman

In reply to Ion Todirel

#Oct 30th @ 12:16 PM

Not to mention, I still affirm there is no good way to input equations or formulas.

figuerres
???

In reply to intelman

#Oct 30th @ 2:32 PM

and the tablet has a tool called "Math input panel" wich a quic test seems to be able to do most algebraic formulas i tried.

incluing symbols in greek .... like pi and alpha.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

In reply to figuerres

#Oct 30th @ 2:41 PM

The Math input panel just converts it into a bitmap, it doesn't give you LaTeX or any other markup for reuse in other applications where it'd be useful (like MathType, Mathematica, Matlab, etc)

Blue Ink
C you

In reply to W3bbo

#Oct 30th @ 4:30 PM

Er, not sure what you are referring to. The Math Input Panel in Windows 7 does nor output bitmaps, it produces MathML. I didn't test it with Matlab & Co yet, but works perfectly with Word 2007. So much so that I actually find it easier to scribble my equations on the scratchpad than using the equation editor.

Actually, I'd be happier if it did provide alternatives, like vector graphics or bitmaps, as this would make it useful in other contexts. Even having access to the MathML source would be nice.