<p>Hey, i was really interested in getting the hp tx2000. is it helpful for college? i don't play that many games on the computer (i am more of a console guy) and i want this laptop to last for 4 years. any thoughts?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>the laptop may or may not last your 4 years - if it does, it will feel pretty slow and decrepit. with the pace of technology these days, don't plan on using it through all of college right now.</p></li>
<li><p>my experience with tablets in general is that they're pretty gimmicky - fun to use, fun to show off but ultimately you go back to mouse and keyboard. Unless you have a specific reason for wanting touchscreen (ie graphic design) i wouldn't get it unless the cost was about the same. I know a kid at school who has a tx1000 and he never uses the touchscreen (because he cracked it). The tx2000 isn't too bad costwise, but ask if you really need one or if it would just be an expensive toy</p></li>
</ol>
<p>You're paying a premium for a tablet form factor and the guts will be obsolecent (but not useless) in 4 years anyway. Spend money on display and CPU (can't upgrade later), ram (may be upgradable), and disk (in that order), and budget for a printer, external storage (for backups and excess stuff) and think about things like warranty, what sort of on-campus support is available, security software, and if the school provides a discount or your parents can get one through an employer.</p>
<p>I've ordered one, but I am an engineering student who is going all-digital with my notes. I will be in many math and physics classes, and it's too damn hard to write equations in notes in Word :p. Therefore, it makes sense for me to go with a tablet.
It depends on your major and what you want to do with your laptop.</p>
<p>thanks for the info guys. i am still undecided. i am a Poli Sci major so i don't know if i need it or not</p>
<p><em>sigh</em> It's depressing how much the cost of that hp tablet has come down over the past year.
(I own the precursor model tx1000z... bought it 1 year ago)
Overall, I really love this computer. It's small, it's much lighter than my previous laptop, and the swivel screen/tablet feature is the icing on the cake.
I use microsoft onenote to do homework (handwritten). The touch screen takes some getting used to, some pressure is required. But I think for quick sloppy notes in lectures, pen & paper is the way to go. I don't think my notes would be remotely legible if I tried to do them on the computer.
Another thing to consider is battery life.. I have a 4 cell battery for this computer (which they don't even have as an option anymore). It's flush with the back of the computer, and lasts about 1.5 hours. The 6 cell that they sell lasts longer, but it sticks out like 3/4" out the back of the computer. They are selling an 8 cell now too... bet that one is even bigger.</p>
<p>I bought the HP tx2000 this week.
Not yet in college, but I needed a lap top for a job, and intended on purchasing a tablet anyway. So far it is wonderful. The hard drive is massive, I have 2 or 3 GB of RAM (can't remember which model I bought...it is really new) and it is so far amazing. You can buy a 4 GB RAM tx2000 and the 12 cell battery....quite amazing, yes?</p>
<p>Shop around town (not online) it is much cheaper. </p>
<p>You can personalize the handwriting to understand what you say by writing 50 random sentences on a program that comes with it, and you can write a word 4 times if it does not understand it.</p>
<p>It's going well so far, except I'm still messing around with formatting it, practicing by writing up laboratories for science; so far the formatting is a bit crazy...</p>
<p>
[quote]
I bought the HP tx2000 this week.
Not yet in college, but I needed a lap top for a job, and intended on purchasing a tablet anyway. So far it is wonderful. The hard drive is massive, I have 2 or 3 GB of RAM (can't remember which model I bought...it is really new) and it is so far amazing. You can buy a 4 GB RAM tx2000 and the 12 cell battery....quite amazing, yes?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Make sure you buy it with the minimum amount of RAM and then buy extra RAM separately from newegg.com and add it yourself - it'll literally save you hundreds of dollars.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I've ordered one, but I am an engineering student who is going all-digital with my notes. I will be in many math and physics classes, and it's too damn hard to write equations in notes in Word . Therefore, it makes sense for me to go with a tablet.
It depends on your major and what you want to do with your laptop.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ever tried LaTeX? It has mathematical symbol support that you'll never find in a word processor like Word.</p>
<p>I'm considering tablet laptops too, this topic is super helpful. =)
I think the HP tx2000 looks the best to me right now although I don't like that there isn't a Intel option for the processor. </p>
<p>Does anybody have any tablet suggestions?</p>
<p>LaTex is horrible, in my opinion. I have tried many free-trials of equation writers,but I bought a program called RapidPi. It is really amazing, and a great way to type math.</p>
<p>i heard the dell tablet is good too but that is well over 2 grand</p>
<p>When it comes to economics and finance, engineering, sciences and math, no laptop is better than a Tablet PC. You can write, draw, design and enter equations and chemical compounds on the Tablet’s screen just as you would on paper. Unlike paper, you can hyperlink web based information to your notes. Imagine reviewing your notes and being able to click on a hyperlink to a Wikipedia or Encarta article on that topic. In collaborative projects, you can easily add comments from other participants in your group. PowerPoint presentations can be downloaded and annotated with your own notes or add hyperlinks for more information. For the lucky few, there are some text books that have a digital edition. Link your class notes to the relevant passages from the digital textbook. </p>
<p>If you use MS OneNote, it gets even better. OneNote has both an audio/video feature for note-taking. With your instructor’s permission, you can use your Tablet PC’s mic (or attach an external directional one) and you can create an audio recording of the lecture. How does this differ from just using a voice recorder? You start recording at the beginning of the lecture and begin taking notes. When your professor makes an interesting point, you can paste a “timestamp” marker on your note and continue on taking notes. After the lecture, you can review your notes and click on the timestamp and you can listen to what your professor said at that point of the lecture. No searching back and forth as with an audio recorder. </p>
<p>Say you have a podcast of a lecture (audio or audio/video). Import the podcast into OneNote. MS OneNote has the ability to index the audio portion of the podcast. You can then search on a particular phrase or word and OneNote will play it back (with video, if that’s included).</p>
<p>OneNote also has the ability to take almost any image file and index the text. Say you have a class handout or a course pack that does not have a digital format. You can scan the pages into OneNote and it can make the text searchable. </p>
<p>Just a final note on LaTex and other math equation writers: these are essentially typesetting programs designed for publication. If you use a Tablet PC, there is a math program called Mathjournal from Xthink. You open the program and write out your math problem on your Tablet screen (just as you would on paper). Click on the solution button and you get the step by step ANSWER. LaTex and Rapidpi do not give you the ANSWER. Want you homework to look nice? Output you problems to the native Mathjournal “MathML” or to the LaTex format and print it out. You are learning math, not typesetting. </p>
<p>See the following:</p>
<p>[xThink[/url</a>]</p>
<p>[url=<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2005/09/14/467123.aspx%5DChris">http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2005/09/14/467123.aspx]Chris</a> Pratley's OneNote Blog : Unifying the analog and the digital with OneNote](<a href="http://www.xthink.com/index.html%5DxThink%5B/url">http://www.xthink.com/index.html)</p>
<p>Microsoft</a> OneNote - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
<p>Re Dell Tablet:</p>
<p>It is expensive. A lot of students were hoping that it would undercut other Tablet PCs. Unfortunately, Dell decided to go after the business market.</p>
<p>wow thanks for the infomation. right now costco is having a deal for the tx2000 for 999.99. i might go pick it up!</p>
<p>any other infomation i should know?</p>
<p>What about someone who will be involved in seminar based classes based upon reading? Would it be logical to annotate readings and search them after scanning them/downloading them possibly? Nice to search them during class to reference the text? Would it be nice to take down my notes/diagrams for reference?</p>
<p>Suggestions? Literally ALL of my classes will have under 25 kids and I will be doing a ton of reading based seminars. Granted I will have a few math/science courses (more problem-set based I am sure). </p>
<p>If I was EXTREMELY disorganized in high school would a tablet help me keep things centralized and paperless (papers are stuffed in my books). I really need to be more organized in college as time is really a constraint.</p>
<p>
[quote]
LaTex is horrible, in my opinion.
[/quote]
Why's that?</p>
<p>
[quote]
LaTex is horrible, in my opinion. I have tried many free-trials of equation writers,but I bought a program called RapidPi. It is really amazing, and a great way to type math.
[/quote]
Well, Rapid pi does not seem all that different than TeX. Check out the wikipedia entry on TeX at TeX</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia . So, if you want to write out the quadratic equation you would type:
[quote]
The quadratic formula is $-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac} \over 2a$
\end
[/quote]
</p>
<p>for most things, that seems fairly simple for a fast, accurate typer. Also, there are numerous FREE programs (such as latex) to use a front end for the little markup language (I guess it would be called a markup language at least). There are even free plugins for open office so that you can use a little TeX.</p>
<p>As for another solution, which I plan on getting myself before I go to college, is the I-Pin, which is basically a mouse that acts like a pen. Combine that with TeX, OpenOffice, and some other free software and you have a good note-taking solution. Run Linux like I do and you have a completely free note-taking solution. :-)</p>
<p>EDIT: You may want to take a look at LyX. It looks pretty cool and is a program I've been meaning to test out for a while now.</p>
<p>EDIT2: Take a look at this little flash TeX demo: <a href="http://wiki.lyx.org/uploads/LyX/Screencasts/LyXIntroPalette.htm%5B/url%5D">http://wiki.lyx.org/uploads/LyX/Screencasts/LyXIntroPalette.htm</a> . It's really neat.</p>
<p>First, Tablet PCs are not game machines. Since you’re a console gamer, that’s not a problem. Secondly, there is a learning curve with any newer technology. To make the most of Tablet PCs, you have to learn to be more organized. The tools are powerful and the ways in which you can arrange information is limitless. Some people get it, others don’t. Third, OneNote can convert your handwriting into typed text. It’s a nice feature, but you should get used to leaving your notes in your own handwriting. It’s like “trusting the Force”. </p>
<p>The biggest argument against Tablets is the comment that “I can type faster than I can write”. Even I can type much faster than I can write. Typing notes and writing notes are two different skills. If you’re a court reporter or stenographer, typing notes is the way to go. Mostly, the problem is the noise you make while typing. Imagine a bunch of people in your class pounding away at the keyboards. </p>
<p>Typing and listening to a lecture is hard. You hear a good sentence and you want to type it verbatim. By the time you finish typing, the professor has moved on and you may have lost the thread of what was being said. With writing notes, you already know that you can’t capture everything that is said during a lecture. You try to capture the gist of what is said and summarize it as best you can while following along. With OneNote, you can capture the audio and go back and adjust your notes accordingly.</p>
<p>Here are some good websites that deal with Tablets:</p>
<p>The</a> Student Tablet PC</p>
<p>GottaBeMobile</a> - Tablet PC & UMPC News & Video Reviews, and Tablet PC / UMPC Forums</p>
<p>Tablet</a> PC Reviews</p>
<p>While “Googling” I found a blog about cool OneNote tricks. If you go to the middle of blog where the comments are, you see someone explaining the audio feature of OneNote when used during a business meeting. The poster thought being a college student with this technology would be so great…</p>
<p>terrygold.com:</a> Cool OneNote Features</p>
<p>Re Disorganization and seminar classes:</p>
<p>Disorganization on paper is disastrous; disorganization on a Tablet PC, not so bad. Look at it this way: on paper, everything is pretty much cast in stone. You can scribble notes in the margins to clarify a badly written note or draw arrows to connect different ideas together. You can erase some notes if you use a pencil, but it just leaves a big mess. With a Tablet PC, you can move your notes around the page just like a word processor. Clarify a badly written note, no problem. Just re-write the note and “erase” the bad one. Some Tablets come with a stylus that thinks it’s a pencil. You can flip the stylus around like a pencil and electronically “erase” a sentence or word by hovering over the bad parts and moving it back and forth over the screen like a real eraser. Lots of people who use this feature unconsciously blow the imaginary eraser dust away. </p>
<p>A Tablet PC alone will not make you more organized. It does have the potential and power to make you more organized. Paper is paper. Paper notes are static. Digital notes are dynamic. You can move digital notes around. You can edit a digital note. You can hyperlink a digital note with information from the Internet. You can import a picture or a graph from a class handout or a web site. Studying George Washington? If your classroom has WiFi, pull up a picture of the First President and paste it in your OneNote lecture notes. Much better than drawing a stick figure of George. Then again, because you’re taking digital notes, you can draw that stick figure if you want to or not…</p>
<p>Big on Post-it notes? The latest version of OneNote (2007), has something called “side notes”. Just like Post-it’s but it’s digital as well. Paste them wherever you want. </p>
<p>Anything that has text that can be scanned is indexed and searchable through OneNote. What’s not to like?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Typing and listening to a lecture is hard. You hear a good sentence and you want to type it verbatim. By the time you finish typing, the professor has moved on and you may have lost the thread of what was being said.
[/quote]
That seems to be the problem with writing notes by hand. :S Very simple solution: learn to not take advantage of the keyboard.</p>
<p>What I like about typing is I don't have to pay attention to the screen. I can pay attention to the class while typing down my ideas since a keyboard is like an extension to my mind. When I find an idea that is interesting, instead of thinking about it, I can type it out, while still paying attention to the lecture, just as I can think about some quick fact while still paying attention to the lecture. With typing you don't lose track of what's going on and don't' get distracted by the notes themselves. At the end, you can go back and organize your notes, make them pretty, etc, etc.</p>
<p>Maybe it's just because I can type as fast as I can and I don't really ever think about the actual typing, but I just feel as if I'm thinking to myself, but oh well.</p>
<h2>My Free plan for what to do for notes/research in college:</h2>
<ol>
<li> Record the lectures (possibly find a way to do timestamp like with the program you mentioned so I can just press a keyboard shortcut and paste it into whatever program I'm using).</li>
<li> Use FreeMind (an awesome little program for organizing lots of little notes and data. I don't know if I'd use it for taking notes at a lecture, but I will be using it for my distance learning English 102 research paper. Allows you to take tons of data, move it around, etc. etc. in a way that's a lot nicer than dealing with a bazillion note cards).</li>
<li> Use LyX for taking science/math notes. If this proves to be too slow (though, with a little practice, I think it will be a lot faster and I'll actually be able to read my math notes for a change), I'll use the mouse pen thing, but otherwise, LyX looks like a great solution.</li>
<li> Set up a wiki for organizing all my notes (including, but not limited to FreeMind documents, LyX documents, normal notes, and audio files).</li>
<li> Buy this neat device by linksys which I can't remember the name of to host the wiki so I can access my notes anywhere and have a backup of everything plus have it on the school's network. I can create a script to back that up onto a remote server then, so it can be accessed everywhere else.</li>
</ol>
<p>I tend to have a bazillion papers, and even when I am organized, My papers always seem to be crunched up, ripped, etc. eventually, so even if my notebook is nice, clean, and organized, it still looks messy and is a pain to go through since it's falling apart.</p>
<p>All these links have been extremely helpful, I'm starting to lean more and more toward getting a tablet.</p>
<p>I'll just have to wait until Mac releases their new Macbooks to see which types of laptop I'm getting for sure.</p>
<p>In response to someone else's question, I don't like LaTex because it is not simplistic.</p>
<p>Example of LaTex (taken from above...sorry I don't know how to do quotes)</p>
<p>The quadratic formula is $-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac} \over 2a$
\end</p>
<p>Example of RapidPi</p>
<p>b+-(.sqrt(b^2-4ac))/2a</p>
<p>Again,...</p>
<p>Example of LaTex:</p>
<p>\frac{1}{4}</p>
<p>Example of RapidPi</p>
<p>1/4</p>
<p>I guess it is just preference, and the symbology of LaTex are not that difficult, but RapidPi is so much easier for me than Tex, LaTex, and Microsoft Equation editor because of the simplicity in typing equations, how the programintegrates into power-point, word, and excel.</p>
<p>Personal preference, I suppose...</p>
<p>:)</p>