Quote:
Originally Posted by richman
Makes sense, a pc tablet seems good to me. I guess I was comparing the netbook/notebook to ereaders. And it would be better than ereader.
I am surprised to hear that you think netbooks/notebooks would be looked down at in schools, although a pc tablet would be better, depending on typing styles.
Gee when I was in medical school, I had notebook computer, video camera, and mp3 recordings going at same time. My teachers didn't think anything of it. I can't imagine teachers coming down on laptops/netbooks but if you say so, times have changed. 
Today I would probably bring vado HD camcorder, a zoom h2 recorder, netbook to take notes I type pretty fast (and I like the battery life on netbooks compared to my notebooks.
p.s. your comments seem like they might be right maybe for high school. But college and above, netbooks, laptops and pc tablet seem like they could be interchangable. As to reading pdf's on netbooks/laptops I don't have trouble, but I can see advantage of PC tablet too. Which PC tablet do you recommend. |
It all depends on the prof. And some profs are dead set against typing (and some get really pissed off about recording) in class. It is especially true in law school where they think, and there is some truth to this, that if you are recording, then you aren't paying attention in class. I happen to think the reverse is true, but that's me. There are students, even in college courses and grad school courses, who are idiots ... don't ask me how they got into school, but they did. I have seen professors ban a particular student from class for acting like a complete twit.
In addition, some profs find the background noise of several hundred students typing furiously away to be a bit distracting.
My absolute favorite combination would be a nice tablet PC for my textbooks, and a Livescribe pen and pad for taking handwritten notes. Livescribe has good OCR, and the voice recording feature is marvelous. The sound reproduction is amazing. Plus, you can easily sync your notes with the tablet. Also, recording is ultra subtle, so if you do have a prof, they probably won't even notice you are doing it.
The reason I wouldn't recommend just wandering around school and asking other students what they think or what they use, is that .... well, I'm assuming that your student wants to be in the top 5% of his or her class. Just wandering around the school means that 95% of the people that you talk to will be lower down in the class rankings than you want to be.
I started each graduate program with the idea that I wanted to be either at the very top of my class or in the top 5% at least. So, I found that not paying any attention to most of what my classmates said or recommended was very important in terms of succeeding.
They were all lovely people, and some of them (even the idiots) have gone on to be successful, but the bottom line when you are looking at positions post-graduate school is class ranking. So, why start taking tips from the people you are hoping to pass in the rankings??
Any good tablet will work. It's just that, if you are looking for something that won't break the bank, the TC1000 was and still is a great choice. It is lightweight, cheap, easy to upgrade, and .... having a licensed copy of Acrobat Pro is a great thing to have as you start a law practice. (Maybe not quite as important for a medical practice, but for law .... seriously important.)