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I have experience, and it happened well before the iPad. I have a Lenovo X61 notebook/tablet w/Pen. Combined with Microsoft OneNote it allowed me to take notes

I have experience, and it happened well before the iPad. I have a Lenovo X61 notebook/tablet w/Pen. Combined with Microsoft OneNote it allowed me to take notes on my computer, even in my engineering classes. For a while I had experimented with taking all of my notes with a plain laptop since I can type much faster than I can write with the added bonus of not having legibility issues. For some classes this worked just fine but being an engineering student, it ultimately proved impossible. Try taking physics notes, at speed, with Word and it's equation editor and you'll get it pretty quickly. Trying to keep a notebook of paper diagrams and typed notes on my computer synchronized was also proving to be a pain. Then my laptop died and I purchased a Lenovo X61 tablet. It changed everything. Being able to type notes in a lecture then flip the screen over and start copying over diagrams drastically increased my efficiency by reducing everything to one medium. I could now do typed notes, hand written notes, homework assignments completely on my computer and even in one program. The only paper I relied on was printing some assignments as needed. Conversion tablets have been around for a while and have both a touch screen and a keyboard, allowing for a very wide range of user input. Coupled with programs like OneNote and some diagramming/mind-mapping software I can quickly sketch out just about anything I can think of.

jacobolus 16y ago
Trying to use word to do anything at speed is a bad idea. (Or frankly, to do anything at all with it – except perhaps exchange documents with other people who use word – is a bad idea.) With training though it is possible to TeX notes at the same speed as handwritten notes, including commutative diagrams and all kinds of complicated formulae. I know this because there was a guy in my math course 5 years ago who could TeX notes substantially faster than I could write them with a pen, when I was trying to hurry.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >I know this because there was a guy in my math course 5 years ago who could TeX notes substantially faster than I could write them with a pen I knew a guy who could juggle 7 balls in cascade.
  - jacobolus 16y ago
    Yes. And if you thought you needed to juggle seven balls, you could also learn to do it (that one would take many years of concerted effort, but you could learn to juggle 5 balls in a few months if you really wanted to). My point is that with some training it is possible to take math (& therefore most of physics/engineering/etc.) notes at high speed using LaTeX, if you practice and set up some shortcuts for yourself. Personally I don’t want to put in the effort practicing to do it, but it’s not unreasonably difficult either (try to transcribe stuff in TeX with an emphasis on speed for a couple hours a week for a few months and you’ll end up quite good at it).
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    >Yes. And if you thought you needed to juggle seven balls, you could also learn to do it. I can juggle 3 balls. However, I think even if my life depended on it I couldn't possibly do 7, my reaction times are too long and my coordination is too poor. My point, in case anyone missed it is that this looks like an edge case to me.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
Maro 16y ago
Can you post some examples?
- Pyrodogg 16y ago
  I'll flip though some things when I get home this evening.
  - Pyrodogg 16y ago
    So, looking back through my notes it turns out I just wrote things out much more frequently than I used the keyboard. Negating the legibility bonus. Here's a page from my Signals and Systems class notes from '08 http://www.scribd.com/doc/40684255/Signals-and-Systems http://www.scribd.com/doc/40684255/Signals-and-Systems
saurik 16y ago
As someone else who has been using tablets for a long time (going back to Windows 3.11 for Pen on a Compaq Concerto), the key difference between these devices and the iPad is their choice of a reasonable input device: a pen. Mushing around with your fingers on a surface you have to otherwise actively avoid touching (such as by resting your wrist on the surface), implying your fat hands and fingers are covering the thing you are trying to draw/write and you are relying on the fine posture control of one or two fingers for precision input (something many users don't have, and which I can already feel slipping away at the relatively young age of 28) is utterly ineffective.

jacobolus 16y ago

Trying to use word to do anything at speed is a bad idea. (Or frankly, to do anything at all with it – except perhaps exchange documents with other people who use word – is a bad idea.) With training though it is possible to TeX notes at the same speed as handwritten notes, including commutative diagrams and all kinds of complicated formulae. I know this because there was a guy in my math course 5 years ago who could TeX notes substantially faster than I could write them with a pen, when I was trying to hurry.

pbhjpbhj 16y ago
>I know this because there was a guy in my math course 5 years ago who could TeX notes substantially faster than I could write them with a pen I knew a guy who could juggle 7 balls in cascade.
- jacobolus 16y ago
  Yes. And if you thought you needed to juggle seven balls, you could also learn to do it (that one would take many years of concerted effort, but you could learn to juggle 5 balls in a few months if you really wanted to). My point is that with some training it is possible to take math (& therefore most of physics/engineering/etc.) notes at high speed using LaTeX, if you practice and set up some shortcuts for yourself. Personally I don’t want to put in the effort practicing to do it, but it’s not unreasonably difficult either (try to transcribe stuff in TeX with an emphasis on speed for a couple hours a week for a few months and you’ll end up quite good at it).
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >Yes. And if you thought you needed to juggle seven balls, you could also learn to do it. I can juggle 3 balls. However, I think even if my life depended on it I couldn't possibly do 7, my reaction times are too long and my coordination is too poor. My point, in case anyone missed it is that this looks like an edge case to me.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]

Maro 16y ago

Can you post some examples?

Pyrodogg 16y ago
I'll flip though some things when I get home this evening.
- Pyrodogg 16y ago
  So, looking back through my notes it turns out I just wrote things out much more frequently than I used the keyboard. Negating the legibility bonus. Here's a page from my Signals and Systems class notes from '08 http://www.scribd.com/doc/40684255/Signals-and-Systems http://www.scribd.com/doc/40684255/Signals-and-Systems

saurik 16y ago

As someone else who has been using tablets for a long time (going back to Windows 3.11 for Pen on a Compaq Concerto), the key difference between these devices and the iPad is their choice of a reasonable input device: a pen. Mushing around with your fingers on a surface you have to otherwise actively avoid touching (such as by resting your wrist on the surface), implying your fat hands and fingers are covering the thing you are trying to draw/write and you are relying on the fine posture control of one or two fingers for precision input (something many users don't have, and which I can already feel slipping away at the relatively young age of 28) is utterly ineffective.