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Comment by stevejohnson | Hacker News Reader

It still bugs me that computers (and digital devices in general) are not good for taking notes. They work wonderfully for displaying information and entering raw text, but as soon as you want to do any kind of meaningful editing, markup, or diagramming, your hands are tied.

One reason I got so excited about the iPad and get so frustrated at the people who claim it's "only for consumption" is that it helps break down the diagram barrier. However, it sacrifices text input, which again moves it away from an ideal note-taking environment. If I owned one, I could perhaps make some statement about its use in conjunction with a bluetooth keyboard, but that analysis is pending experimentation.

I do think that the screen may be too small to provide an ideal note-taking experience.

Does anyone else have tablet note-taking experience?

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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 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.

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.

>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.

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).

>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.

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.

Can you post some examples?

I'll flip though some things when I get home this evening.

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

I tried using a Newton back in the early 90s and...it did not work too well, except at distracting other people in class.

I think the big value in managing notes with a computer is in the re-writing of paper notes after class/meeting/etc. Not only do you get an editable/searchable/printable/re-orderable version of your notes, re-entering them reinforces the memory and gives you a chance of viewing it from a perspective not rushed by the need to get something down on paper while your prof is whizzing through material.

The iPad + GoodReader, Papers, iThoughts HD, and occasionally Evernote work pretty well for search and presentation, although I wish there were one good memex system.

To be honest, I don’t think they’re very good for “displaying” text information, when that includes anything you want to read closely and interact with, either. I underline and scribble marginal notes all over everything I read seriously, and current electronic devices don’t come close to keeping up.

It’s really tragic, because it seems like with the proper software a device like the iPad (esp. one also supporting pen input, but even just with finger touch) would be really great for reading, and for marking up/hyperlinking/etc.

I have a Livescribe pen, which records the audio in the room with the text you write in the notebook. It works great and was a nice tool to have in my classes, and is now a great tool for meetings in my job.

Great for discussions which includes a lot of drawing and explaining, with no need for writing down everything as it can just be replayed afterwards.

I just had to Google that after reading this comment and WOW, this concept blows my mind.

Of course, my first thought was "How in the hell does that even work" but it turns out there are identifying symbols in the paper so I guess they just have to store a mapping of PAPER POSITION -> TIME INDEX to make it work.

Still a brilliant idea and execution.

Also available as a toy - look for Fly pen.

Does anyone else have tablet note-taking experience?

I don't think that current computing devices will ever be able to capture the utility and aesthetic of pen on paper. Though I am a bit of a writing snob. Taking a stylus to a screen feels a little like trying to take a sports car on a frozen lake to me.

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