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I'm a college student studying engineering. I can say that replacing my laptop with my Surface Pro has been amazing. I'm virtually 100% paperless, with all my n

I'm a college student studying engineering. I can say that replacing my laptop with my Surface Pro has been amazing. I'm virtually 100% paperless, with all my notes being taken with OneNote (seriously amazing!) and textbooks saved as PDFs. It's also awesome that the Pro has enough power for me to do real dev work on it. So make the switch! You won't be disappointed!

CodeCube 13y ago
OneNote (+ digitizer) is indeed amazing ... I don't have a surface, but I do have a series 7 slate, and I have to say that the writing/drawing experience on win8 is really really nice. Considering upgrading it to the pro 2 now.
- gum_ina_package 13y ago
  You won't regret the upgrade my friend! I'm actually thinking about buying the docking station for my Surface. I think once I get 8.1 on there and the screen scaling issues are fixed, I'll do that.
  - philliphaydon 13y ago
    8.1 screen scaling is awesome. Flatmate has a iMac with Windows 8.1 on it, 27" display and a low-res 24" display, Windows 8.1 fixed the scaling for the 2nd monitor now that you can set different scaling on each monitor.
  - konstruktor 13y ago
    Downvoted you because this looks like astroturfing. New account, seemingly random nickname, a persona matching the target audience of this site and several postings with purely positive content and a style that doesn't look right on HN. That said, the Surface Pro 2 looks really appealing.
    - Kronopath 13y ago
      It's very likely obvious astroturfing. Microsoft does this a lot. Keep this incident in mind next time you hear someone extolling the virtues of Win8-style "flat design".
mikevm 13y ago
I'm a student also, but I've been using the iPad for this. I don't take any notes on the iPad itself because the courses I need to take notes on are mathematical, so I simply write on paper and then when I come back home I scan it and append the scans to an evergrowing PDF file that is synced to my iPad. I'm looking for a replacement for my iPad 2, but I can't settle on anything because all the non-iPad tablets have a widescreen, which I believe is poor choice when it comes to reading PDF textbooks. Right now I read my PDF textbooks in landscape mode, and I use GoodReader to crop the margins, and everything looks fabulous. I'm worried that if I move to a widescreen tablet, I will end up with less vertical space and wasted horizontal space ("black bars" due to incompatible aspect ratios of the page and the screen). How's your experience when it comes to reading these kind of textbooks? Any chance you could provide screenshots of how these textbooks look like when you read them in landscape mode?
- philliphaydon 13y ago
  I only have a Surface RT :( sad days. Can't say I have any complaints with reading Kindle books or PDFs.
- Livven 13y ago
  FYI with OneNote and a digitizer stylus as the Surface Pro comes with you can just write your notes on the screen. OneNote will recognize the handwriting and allow you to search through it etc. Sorry if you already know that, from the way your comment is phrased it looks like you don't so I thought I'd throw it out.
  - mikevm 13y ago
    I don't think it'd be particularly efficient. I need to be able to write proofs (which include lots of math symbols) and draw diagrams very quickly. I've seen people do it with digitizers, but the results ends up being rather poor. Pen & paper still looks best.
    - mietek 13y ago
      Is there a usable handwriting recognizer which can deal with heavy math notation?

CodeCube 13y ago

OneNote (+ digitizer) is indeed amazing ... I don't have a surface, but I do have a series 7 slate, and I have to say that the writing/drawing experience on win8 is really really nice. Considering upgrading it to the pro 2 now.

gum_ina_package 13y ago
You won't regret the upgrade my friend! I'm actually thinking about buying the docking station for my Surface. I think once I get 8.1 on there and the screen scaling issues are fixed, I'll do that.
- philliphaydon 13y ago
  8.1 screen scaling is awesome. Flatmate has a iMac with Windows 8.1 on it, 27" display and a low-res 24" display, Windows 8.1 fixed the scaling for the 2nd monitor now that you can set different scaling on each monitor.
- konstruktor 13y ago
  Downvoted you because this looks like astroturfing. New account, seemingly random nickname, a persona matching the target audience of this site and several postings with purely positive content and a style that doesn't look right on HN. That said, the Surface Pro 2 looks really appealing.
  - Kronopath 13y ago
    It's very likely obvious astroturfing. Microsoft does this a lot. Keep this incident in mind next time you hear someone extolling the virtues of Win8-style "flat design".

mikevm 13y ago

I'm a student also, but I've been using the iPad for this. I don't take any notes on the iPad itself because the courses I need to take notes on are mathematical, so I simply write on paper and then when I come back home I scan it and append the scans to an evergrowing PDF file that is synced to my iPad. I'm looking for a replacement for my iPad 2, but I can't settle on anything because all the non-iPad tablets have a widescreen, which I believe is poor choice when it comes to reading PDF textbooks. Right now I read my PDF textbooks in landscape mode, and I use GoodReader to crop the margins, and everything looks fabulous. I'm worried that if I move to a widescreen tablet, I will end up with less vertical space and wasted horizontal space ("black bars" due to incompatible aspect ratios of the page and the screen). How's your experience when it comes to reading these kind of textbooks? Any chance you could provide screenshots of how these textbooks look like when you read them in landscape mode?

philliphaydon 13y ago
I only have a Surface RT :( sad days. Can't say I have any complaints with reading Kindle books or PDFs.
Livven 13y ago
FYI with OneNote and a digitizer stylus as the Surface Pro comes with you can just write your notes on the screen. OneNote will recognize the handwriting and allow you to search through it etc. Sorry if you already know that, from the way your comment is phrased it looks like you don't so I thought I'd throw it out.
- mikevm 13y ago
  I don't think it'd be particularly efficient. I need to be able to write proofs (which include lots of math symbols) and draw diagrams very quickly. I've seen people do it with digitizers, but the results ends up being rather poor. Pen & paper still looks best.
  - mietek 13y ago
    Is there a usable handwriting recognizer which can deal with heavy math notation?