Digital note taking - advice and opinions?

[Ivo]

I've been thinking for several years to do away with paper notebooks and go digital. One of my friends was doing this with convertible laptops back in 2006 or 2007 already.

I'm progressively typing more stuff in just to avoid paper notebooks spread around which you may not have with you when on a work trip and is a pain when moving houses and such. I also scan or take pics of my physical notes to throw out the originals but I don't think that is an ideal solution.

I have an android 7'' tablet (Google Nexus 2nd version) but from a bit of testing that does not seem good enough to do extensive handwriting.
I tried out a Wacom tablet (I think maybe a Bamboo or an older entry-level equivalent) and after getting used to the hand-eye disconnect it seemed very promising.

I'm pretty sure there is software out for this kind of stuff (EverNote perhaps will be a good one).

Eventually if I really get into digital note taking I should go for a Surface Pro next time I get a new tablet (at least 1 year from now if not later), but at this stage I'm not looking into that kind of expensive solution.

Anyone here on the forum been doing this kind of stuff or thinking about it, please chime in.

[fastbilly1]

When I was in college I tried to go purely digital. I had a Palm IIIc and a Palm Zire 71. I got pretty good at palm's handwriting system. But I ended up with a Palm IR keyboard and stopped using the handwriting system. I became mechanical with the keyboard and I could flip it out and open my palm to the typing program in one motion. The issue I had was that after a frustrating day of handwriting, I broke the Zire 71's screen. Now the newer screens wont be broken by a stylus, but I still highly recommend a keyboard that is small and moveable. I am trying to justify a hemingwrite/astrohaus, but I dont think that is what you are looking for. Can you use a foldable bluetooth keyboard, or a laptop sized one? The Logitech K480 is spectacular for the price and size so is the Palm 3245WW .

[Ivo]

When I was in college I tried to go purely digital. I had a Palm IIIc and a Palm Zire 71. I got pretty good at palm's handwriting system. But I ended up with a Palm IR keyboard and stopped using the handwriting system. I became mechanical with the keyboard and I could flip it out and open my palm to the typing program in one motion. The issue I had was that after a frustrating day of handwriting, I broke the Zire 71's screen. Now the newer screens wont be broken by a stylus, but I still highly recommend a keyboard that is small and moveable. I am trying to justify a hemingwrite/astrohaus, but I dont think that is what you are looking for. Can you use a foldable bluetooth keyboard, or a laptop sized one? The Logitech K480 is spectacular for the price and size so is the Palm 3245WW .

For text I have been typing most of stuff, but the paper notepads really give me an edge over that in diagrams and equations, that sort of stuff which typing or drawing with a mouse takes a lot longer to do (at least to me).

Maybe I wasn't very clear in that it isn't about portability at this stage, but being efficient about getting this content into my computer and screen (although if I really like going digital, I would eventually get a laptop/tablet with good enough handwriting capabilities so that I can do it without being tethered on a Wacom tablet). Right now in many cases I'm doing this stuff in paper or on a board and taking a picture or scanning it, and I've done it often enough and also missed out on having some notes that were left in a paper pad that I think it is worth the effort to find a better solution.

In fact this should be even better than paper as I can relatively easily reorder stuff around after putting it there, something which I sometimes really want to do in paper but can't without redoing it.

[isiolia]

Office has OneNote as part of it now, and there are some very cheap Windows tablets out there - HP Stream 7/8 or Dell Venue 8 Pro offhand - that roll in a year of Office 365 Personal for barely more than it'd cost on its own. Main hangup would probably be stylus support, since I think you're largely stuck using the same ones your Nexus can use. I haven't tried using a stylus on my Stream 7, so I'm more just thinking of cheap possibilities.

[Ivo]

Well, I expect that now that Apple is moving into the Surface Pro "toaster-fridge" model that more options for this kind of thing are going to become popular. Hope it drives down the prices because on attachable tablets (like Wacom bamboo) the hand-eye disconnect takes a while getting used to, and the advanced ones with built-in screen (Cintiq? spelling) are rather expensive.