Pen+Paper = 19th century. Wacom tablets = FUTURE

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MRoss

MRoss

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Hi guys!

I noticed a few members (one to be honest) recently purchased a tablet PC. I am a bit of an expert as I have sold, repaired, and replaced nearly 150 tablets this year alone.

I have been taking notes with tablets for over 5 years now and will never go back to pen and paper. Here is why:

  • Flexibility - ability to use computerized shapes (no more messy bell curves), enlarge/shrink/move images, color choices, tip size, etc.
  • Organization - Ex: C++ Homework #3 = MyDocs/MFE/C++/HW3.jnt
  • Cost - One purchase. No more pens, paper, ...
  • Its all here! - No more giving up on finding old papers. Notes from since you purchased your tablet will be on the tablet and backed up on a USB key

I seriously would rather sell my car then my tablet if money got tight.

I have to run proctor a regent now, but in short the best tablet to purchase (IMHO):
Motion LE1700 Dual Core Ultraview - very hard to come by!

Alternatives: Any Motion LE1700 or LE1600

These are bad computers but excellent note takers.

I will reply with a more detailed explanation later tonight or tomorrow.

Enjoy! :cool:
 
I used an IBM Thinkpad tablet when I was going to school 4/5 years ago. That tablet is still going strong at my brother's medical practice.
 
... because everyone knows distributed computing systems cannot fail! :p

About excellent note takers - these: http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/ are even better note takers than tablets, and a lot more affordable imo ;)
 
Alexei Smirnov said:
... because everyone knows distributed computing systems cannot fail! :p

About excellent note takers - these: http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/ are even better note takers than tablets, and a lot more affordable imo ;)
Click to expand...
Have you ever tried this? I have seen it advertised but am very uncertain for many reasons. Also, you do not have the "flexibility" mentioned above which is huge.
 
I do not know how well this crowd understands computer mechanics so I won't go into depths, but here is the general idea:

There are two major tablet pen manufaturers: Wacom and N-Trig

N-Trig is newer. It gets alot of attention and as such is used in a vast majority of tablets now being produced. The major advantage of N-Trig is its ability to capture pen motion as well as mulit-touch.

Wacom is older. Under the screen of the tablet their is a Wacom board (approximately 2"X2"). This board senses Wacom pens - nothing else.

The accuracy and reliability of Wacom far surpassed N-Trig.

Look at HP. The company thrives on hype. If you read the reviews online of HP laptops you will see that they are rated among the worst PC manufaturers around today. Even I have contributed to those ratings :(. Since N-Trig is much more glamorous and exciting, HP uses N-Trig versus Wacom in virtually every tablet they produce.

I have tried every single HP tablet. They are all awful. The only one that is reliable and accurate are the HP TC lineup which, incidentally have Wacom digitizers.

Motion (the company I swear by) has virtually perfect 5 star reviews on every site. I sold 32 LE1700s two moths ago to a construction company for their field workers. I sold another 9 last month to a dental practice. They have perfected the implementation of Wacom in their tablets and they are true masterpieces.

Alain,

I used an IBM Thinkpad tablet when I was going to school 4/5 years ago. That tablet is still going strong at my brother's medical practice.
Click to expand...

I forgot to mention this on top. Yes, the Lenovo's (Wacom) are excellent machines. I used a Lenovo convertible for over a year (my record which I hope to break with my LE1700). The only downside is that they are relatively heavy.

My Sony laptop + My Motion tablet = 6lbs combined!
 
Andy Nguyen said:
What if you lose the USB, your little one yanks it out of the laptop and snaps the connector? (these are real life examples ;) )
Online storage with auto sync would be good. I haven't used it so I don't know.
Click to expand...
I actually backup to my USB every day and back my USB up to my desktop once a week. Lets do some probability now shall we?

P(laptop breaking/stolen/etc...) = 1/1000
P(USB dying/lost) = 1/100
P(Desktop breaking beyond repair) = 1/1000

= .000001% chance of me losing my work. (I am not saying online back is not an excellent idea - I just haven't used it yet)

P(dog eating your paper) = .0001%

Seee? I win! :D
 
I would like to hear suggestion on buying a tablet pc or e-reader.
It would be nice to have something in which I could read textbooks and also have a programming env as well.
thanks
 
I would like to hear suggestion on buying a tablet pc or e-reader.
It would be nice to have something in which I could read textbooks and also have a programming env as well.
thanks
Click to expand...

The only tablets good enough for a programming environment as well as note-taking are:

IBM Lenovo X220
Motion J3500

Both pretty expensive. Neither are any good as an eBook reader. I would suggest you buy one of those and then purchase the Kindle DX (the only eBook reader large enough for textbooks IMHO).

If you would rather have a tablet/eBook reader and leave out the prog env I would go with the Motion LE1700. I upgraded mine to an SSD and it is a half-decent machine now as well (still, I would not use it for hard-core programming).
 
MRoss said:
Have you ever tried this? I have seen it advertised but am very uncertain for many reasons. Also, you do not have the "flexibility" mentioned above which is huge.
Click to expand...
I happen to own one. It's actually really cool. The synchronization between written text and voice recording always blows everyone away. I got several people in our program hooked on them (last semester Dan had a designated student take notes in his class and post them online). :p
 
Cool. I'd love to give it a try.

Still, I would miss the edit-ability. I would often be in class and the professor would bring up a Chi Squared curve or something of the sort and with two clicks I would have a perfect image implemented in my notes. The color and highlighting is also really useful.
 
The tablets will work fine to take. But once you want to include segma summation, integration, derivation ...all math symbols, I would prefer pen and paper...
 
I bought an HP TM2T a couple of months ago. I love this thing. Wacom screen and enough computing power for all uses I've put it through so far.

It'd be nice to have something faster for sure, but it's the best balance between functionality and affordability that I found. Manufacturer refurbs are readily available to take a few hundred off the cost.

I'd highly recommend a clean OS install, though. I didn't do this and I'm pretty sure the prepackaged HP garbage is responsible for various issues I've had with it. Nothing insurmountable, but from what I've seen and hear, you should expect to encounter at least one technical glitch that will have you reaching for google to solve. You get what you pay for in this world. These issues are probably the reason it's so easy to pick up manufacturer refurbs! Less computer savvy or persistent people won't find the solutions.
 
I had a TM2T and had a terrible experience with the pen/touch screen. I am glad that HP finally smartened up and stop selling convertible tablets. I owned many of them and they were all trash.
 

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