Is a Tablet reommended?

<p>You can do quotes by type [.quote]text here[./quote] . Just remove the periods. RapidPi does not do what LyX does for writing equations however it seems. The syntax does seem a little simpler for when you are just starting out, but TeX seems to offer a little more flexibility and LyX gives you a very clever interface for editing TeX equations and full documents. TeX is for more than just math by the way also.</p>

<p>But also, I'm cheap, I don't like to spend money and I'm not going to go pirate things either :-P</p>

<p>LaTeX with emacs. Did I mention you don't need an expensive tablet or software?</p>

<p>just a small note on the hp tablets. i've used them in the past, the ones that came out last summer or fall. i don't like the way they write, and the touchpad is very annoying to use because of how it has small little holes in it and how close it is to the buttons. it could just be my hands though.</p>

<p>i have a gateway tablet. it gets the job done. however if i could, i'd probably get a Lenovo tablet. It really feels like you're writing on paper when you're using it. That's the most important thing I'd say when deciding how to pick out your tablet pc (since you are getting the tablet for it's ability to write on screen).</p>

<p>A note to people planning on recording lectures: will you actually have the time to listen to them? If you have a 3-hour lecture, you won't want to sit through that 3 hours again.</p>

<p>Onenote allows you to search lectures, so that way you can search for the part of the lecture you are looking for. This actually sounds useful....</p>

<p>Does onenote transfer written notes into text in realtime? So i can write blindly and expect a neat typed out paper? It would be better so I can pay attention and write at the same time without having to look at my computer.</p>

<p>I got my HP tx2513cl tablet pc yesterday from Costco for 999.99. Thus far, thus good. I haven't had it anywhere near enough to know whether this is going to be a good pc or not but I am getting good vibes. I haven't tested out the handwriting feature, but I've scribbled around.</p>

<p>So is OneNote mucho recommended over Word for note taking? (I am doing General Biology and General Chemistry this year.)</p>

<p>Re bobbafatty: Until recently, real-time handwriting to text conversion was not possible. In OneNote, you wrote on the screen and converted the writing to text from the menu bar. With the latest version of Ritepen (3.0+), you can write anywhere on your Tablet PC screen and it will convert it to text. Your handwriting is still on the screen, but it will be accompanied with the text conversion. For use in OneNote, you have to download some files to substitute Ritepen’s handwriting recognition software for the Tablet PCs Microsoft’s version. Instructions and sample videos can be found on the Ritepen’s website: Ritescript</a> Home
Ritescript</a> Products | ritePen</p>

<p>As a side note: for students studying French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish, Ritepen will recognize those languages. If you write “bon jour”, it will convert “bon jour” to text. Ritepen’s internal dictionaries should correctly recognize those languages and will not try confusing itself by looking at its English dictionary.</p>

<p>Re: HansTAR: OneNote is far superior to Word for note-taking. OneNote appears as lined paper on your screen so it’s like writing in a regular paper notebook. As already stated in this thread, OneNote has a video/audio recording feature that you can paste time-stamps at any point during a lecture/note-taking period. Click on any time-stamped note and the audio portion at that point in the lecture will be replayed. And because you are studying chemistry and biology, you can draw on the screen. Even better, you can go on the web and capture information and attach it to your notes. Studying the human gnome, paste in a web link to a Wikipedia article and when you review for a test, you read your notes off the Tablet PC screen and you can just click on that Wikipedia or whatever source article that fleshes out a particular term or concept.</p>

<p>thank you for the very thorough answer, the program seemed useful but seemed kinda slow, and I'm not sure about it recognizing characters, if I put Theta in there it probably won't turn up the same</p>

<p>Re bobbafatty: Here’s a fuller explanation on how Ritepen works: Ritescript</a> Products | ritePen Manual</p>

<p>From my understanding, you can create a personal dictionary with any special words. You should be able to add “Theta”. Just a guess… If you have a Tablet PC, you can download a free demo copy of Ritepen to test it out.</p>

<p>Is there a lag between when you write down something on your tablet PC and it shows up on the screen? I could imagine this being annoying especially for people who scribble/write quickly when taking notes...</p>

<p>Did anyone notice recommended is spelled wrong on this post?</p>

<p>who cares?</p>

<p>lol idk just felt like pointing it out</p>

<p>There are some issues with pen lag under XP (in some drawing programs). Under Vista, there doesn’t seem to be that issue. To solve lag problems under XP, read through the following thread:
Source</a> of XP:Tablet Edition's pen lag nailed down - TabletPCBuzz - The Best Place to Learn about Tablet PCs</p>

<p>Woot! woot! Just downloaded the trial. Thanks!</p>

<p>If you plan on buying a special backpack or messenger bag for your laptop (which most students do anyway I suppose) I suggest you just buy a cheaper pc without the tablet screen, keeping the money you save. Use that for a few weeks in college, and if you feel a tablet would be more convenient, just buy an external tablet. They come as cheap as $70. I got a Wacom Bamboo, it came with all the handwriting recognition software and doesn't even need batteries. If you're worried about quality, well, I'm a graphic design major and even I don't mind the lesser dpi than more expensive tablets.</p>

<p>The reason I say get an external tablet ONLY if you're going to buy a bag is because it's a hassle to carry around a tablet and its usb cable and the pen unless you have something to carry all of it in-between classes.</p>

<p>Well thus far in my developmental psych class I have had to do minimum doodling in my notes, but overall this HP tx2500z is holding up well. A lot of tactile buttons on the border that allow for some pretty useful stuff (instant screen brightness, volume, wifi, etc.) Regarding actually taking notes in class, its a good experience, I've never done it before [I'm using OneNote], and the only drawback I'm really having is the obvious, you know, not being able to access my notes at a moment's notice like someone with an actual notebook (and as my pro-Mac-and-pencil-and-paper friend so eloquently put it, "Notebooks never run out of batteries.")</p>

<p>While my other friend, Ethan, wasn't looking, though, I typed in his notes, "Ethan likes little boys."</p>

<p>Yeah, dev psych's a hoot.</p>

<p>lol maybe he'll memorize it on accident</p>

<p>Re: HansTAR</p>

<p>In other threads, I’ve written about OneNote’s audio time-stamp which allows you to tag a written note with an audio time-stamp to coincide with your Tablet PC’s ability to record a lecture. By clicking on a time-stamp, OneNote will play back the lecture’s audio at the point of tagging. </p>

<p>OneNote also has a note flag and note flag summary feature in the tool bar. In OneNote 2007, you can create custom note flags to tag a word, phrase or whatever. After class, you can review your notes and, say, create a custom note flag for “George Washington”. Each place where you have “George Washington”, you place a note flag. From the tool bar, you can click and create a summary note flag for “George” and when your professor mentions “George”, you can click on the summary note flag icon and get a list of your tagged items. Click on “George” and all those similarly tagged items will pop up in your OneNote screen. From here, if you want, you can create a new page and paste and re-order that grouping of notes to form a narrative about a particular term or subject. Similarly, you could use the search and find feature to get references to a particular word or phrase on the fly. The note flag feature, however, makes you go back and review your notes to add flags. This is a good thing for students.</p>

<p>In a similar vein, OneNote has an audio notebook feature. Say you have a podcast or an audio recording of a lecture. Using the line input of your Tablet PC, you can plug in your Ipod or digital tape recorder, open up OneNote and create an audio notebook. Play your recorded audio lecture and OneNote will begin “transcribing” the audio into text. Now a lot depends on the audio quality of the recording and the kind of vocabulary used. There are a lot of specialized dictionaries that can be downloaded from the web to help with the transcription. To test this feature, you can try creating an audio notebook of the nightly news back at your dorm by selecting your Tablet PC’s mic as the audio source. </p>

<p>See the following links:</p>

<p>The</a> Student Tablet PC: Note-Taking
Chris</a> Pratley's Office Labs and OneNote Blog : Getting organized using OneNote note flags
Daniel</a> Escapa's OneNote Blog : New note flag features for OneNote 2007</p>