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Why is the Galaxy Note 2014 good for note taking? What app(s) do you use for note taking? What's bad about Microsoft's and Apple's offerings?

inetknght 9y ago
As far as Apple's offerings: no idea. The last Apple device I used was an 4th-generation iPod back when that was the new thing. Coming from a desktop-power-user background, iOS 4's UX was extremely offensive. So is Android's, by the way, but at least Android's horrid UX cheaper. Technicalities: 1) the S Pen's sensitivity is much closer to the image. Microsoft Surface, in contrast, feels and appears about 1/4" above the image: that causes me to mis-write a lot since I feel the stylus at a different location from where the drawing is being applied. I don't know about you, but I don't write with my pen/pencil/stylus straight up 90 degrees from the surface being written upon which is the only way I could reliably use a Surface for writing. 2) the Galaxy Note 2014's resolution is higher than the Surfaces I've used even though it's on a smaller form factor. That means that the image simply looks sharper. 3) the S Pen uses a different tech so that the Galaxy Note is able to recognize the difference between my fingers (or my palm) resting on the tablet's surface vs the stylus writing whatever's being written. 4) Both of the Galaxy Note 2014s I've used have had a battery life of about a full week from a full charge. It does depend on how much you use it, of course, but typically it's about 4.5 days, dying right at the tail end of Friday. That's with writing notes for about 2 or 3 hours during every workday. Contrast with Surface 3 and Surface Pro ... one had lasted a day and a half on average while the other lasted about 10 hours. 5) S Note translates my handwriting with about a 90% accuracy. But OneNote translates my handwriting to literal garbage text for about 50% of the time. When it doesn't translate to garbage text, there's of course the common typos from thinking I->l->1 B->0->O->o->D->etc (which S Note also has trouble with, but not as much). Opinions: I absolutely despite Microsoft's and Apple's OS offerings these days. I don't like Android, either, but it's the least hated of the three. I use Windows 7 at home for games but otherwise Linux the whole way. Linux allows me to actually customize the UI the way I want; when it doesn't, there's the good ole' command line. I've found the S Note app to be fairly intuitive and straightforward. It's really easy to export notes to PDF or email, eg to share with coworkers. If you can get around OneNote's shitfest version of OCR, I'll admit that the rest of it pretty intuitive. I really didn't care to learn (yet another) different way of doing things though. If I had _one_ complaint about the Galaxy Note, it's that I have yet to find a way to have it require Active Directory to unlock; so if that's a requirement then ~~your company sucks~~ you're SOL for using it at work. If someone knows of a viable way to login to an Active Directory account on Android, that'd be awesome. I also have to say that I actively use Google Play Books. Good luck getting that to work on Surface or iOS outside of ~~Chrome~~ a browser; I never could anyway. If I have to log in to a site using a browser and use the browser to use the site instead of using native apps, then why not just use a Chromebook?

inetknght 9y ago

As far as Apple's offerings: no idea. The last Apple device I used was an 4th-generation iPod back when that was the new thing. Coming from a desktop-power-user background, iOS 4's UX was extremely offensive. So is Android's, by the way, but at least Android's horrid UX cheaper. Technicalities: 1) the S Pen's sensitivity is much closer to the image. Microsoft Surface, in contrast, feels and appears about 1/4" above the image: that causes me to mis-write a lot since I feel the stylus at a different location from where the drawing is being applied. I don't know about you, but I don't write with my pen/pencil/stylus straight up 90 degrees from the surface being written upon which is the only way I could reliably use a Surface for writing. 2) the Galaxy Note 2014's resolution is higher than the Surfaces I've used even though it's on a smaller form factor. That means that the image simply looks sharper. 3) the S Pen uses a different tech so that the Galaxy Note is able to recognize the difference between my fingers (or my palm) resting on the tablet's surface vs the stylus writing whatever's being written. 4) Both of the Galaxy Note 2014s I've used have had a battery life of about a full week from a full charge. It does depend on how much you use it, of course, but typically it's about 4.5 days, dying right at the tail end of Friday. That's with writing notes for about 2 or 3 hours during every workday. Contrast with Surface 3 and Surface Pro ... one had lasted a day and a half on average while the other lasted about 10 hours. 5) S Note translates my handwriting with about a 90% accuracy. But OneNote translates my handwriting to literal garbage text for about 50% of the time. When it doesn't translate to garbage text, there's of course the common typos from thinking I->l->1 B->0->O->o->D->etc (which S Note also has trouble with, but not as much). Opinions: I absolutely despite Microsoft's and Apple's OS offerings these days. I don't like Android, either, but it's the least hated of the three. I use Windows 7 at home for games but otherwise Linux the whole way. Linux allows me to actually customize the UI the way I want; when it doesn't, there's the good ole' command line. I've found the S Note app to be fairly intuitive and straightforward. It's really easy to export notes to PDF or email, eg to share with coworkers. If you can get around OneNote's shitfest version of OCR, I'll admit that the rest of it pretty intuitive. I really didn't care to learn (yet another) different way of doing things though. If I had _one_ complaint about the Galaxy Note, it's that I have yet to find a way to have it require Active Directory to unlock; so if that's a requirement then ~~your company sucks~~ you're SOL for using it at work. If someone knows of a viable way to login to an Active Directory account on Android, that'd be awesome. I also have to say that I actively use Google Play Books. Good luck getting that to work on Surface or iOS outside of ~~Chrome~~ a browser; I never could anyway. If I have to log in to a site using a browser and use the browser to use the site instead of using native apps, then why not just use a Chromebook?