the eeeNote - it’s a serious threat to...everything

[PF4Mobile]

Just curious, I am reading that the device can't do Landscape right?
What if you rotate the pages on the desktop with some software ?

[vxf]

I don't see preferring this to an iPad... but I suppose, if price is a concern, then it would be an interesting option.

But a gray scale LCD is puzzling.

[Kali Yuga]

It sounds like the eeeNote in its current incarnation won't be available in North America: http://www.eeenote.net/

I guess that makes it a serious threat to everything... in Taiwan?

[sarah11918]

Just received mine yesterday, and getting into it today! If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them. (But I am not very far with it yet, so kindly bear with me as I figure it out.)

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

It sounds like the eeeNote in its current incarnation won't be available in North America: http://www.eeenote.net/

I guess that makes it a serious threat to everything... in Taiwan?

I'm channeling my inner Shatner here... KHAAAAN!!!! I mean.... TAIWAAAAAN!

I was really looking forward to the note-taking with this. That sucks.

[wodin]

Yeah, what (s)he said!

[sarah11918]

Originally Posted by RainingLemur

I was really looking forward to the note-taking with this. That sucks.

If you like it, you certainly *can* get it world wide. You just have to order it from PC Home in Taiwan (many have had great experience doing so), find a listing on eBay (probably again from Taiwan, unless it's used) or a local Kijiji/Craigslist post of someone selling used.

It's not like some other products which have seemed impossible to import. You just have to decide whether it's worth the cost.

Status Report: I'm at least in English now.

[wodin]

Thanks again Sarah, MR won't let me give you any more Karma, but I'm thinking "Karma to Sarah!"

Looking forward to a mini review.

[sarah11918]

Originally Posted by wodin

MR won't let me give you any more Karma, but I'm thinking "Karma to Sarah!"

*Anyone* else could press the magic button. :P

Early results are very good as an electronic notetaker. Extremely responsive. Convenient size compromise. Display (with external lighting) is really nice. Sending notes to Evernote is instantaneous, and results in .gif files that can easily be printed as pdfs off my Mac.

It was very easy to boot to English and install the other little apps people have created. The light, minimal email app works, although with any virtual keyboard, you're not going to want to tap out a very long message back. But it's nice knowing you can check/receive in a pinch.

Even in Chinese, I figured out how to snap a picture and annotate it. It connected to our secured wifi at home just fine, although I find it regularly drops and needs to be told to connect again. (Though, it always connects back up again quickly when told.) And since there aren't really apps that sit and use the internet dedicatedly, the dropping out isn't a problem. The one time I tried to send a note to Evernote, but the wifi wasn't connected, it said, "Wifi not connected. Do you want to connect?" etc. so I didn't have to leave what I was doing to get my connection up and running first, then send to Evernote. It did it all as part of my attempt to send to Evernote, which is a nice touch I wouldn't have expected.

So so far, the big thing for me is finding a way to add content by a method other than the official Sync for Windows, since while I'm traveling I'll only have a Mac with me.

But right now I'm going to put some pdfs on the old fashioned way via the tablet PC (which is several years old, running Windows 7 and installed the Eee Sync software no problems). Then I'll get a sense for what pdf annotation is like.

[sarah11918]

Originally Posted by sarah11918

*Anyone* else could press the magic button. :P

And it seems a couple of you did! Thanks, guys!

Played around with pdf last night, and I'll post something more coherent later this morning.

Bottom line, if you're looking to replace a paper notebook (which of course itself doesn't have OCR, doesn't easily leave the physical page, doesn't allow you to "import" anything to draw on), I believe the device is excellent.

I'll get into my efforts to get data "in and out" of the device later, but if you were looking for a single dedicated place to store handwritten notes, sketches, a very basic camera capture (that you can then mark up), document (pdf) storage for reference or basic annotation (that doesn't have to leave the machine; that you intended to keep in this little package), a couple of basic timewasting games, a basic browser (I was on MR forums on the Eee Note last night, logged in and everything), a basic voice recorder, and a way to check email when in wifi range, with enough battery that you wouldn't have to worry about charging it until you go to bed at night, I think this is excellent.

Right now where it's falling short for me is integration with the outside world, and a lot of that has to do with me not having access to Windows on the road and wanting to get data on to the machine without a computer at all, ideally. (i.e. emailing myself a pdf, downloading a pdf I have uploaded somewhere). (Note: I have found I can get pdfs ON to the device, but due to the way the system detects files for the reader and organizes its info in databases, simply adding the pdf to the device's file system doesn't also update the database info so that the reader can tell it's there.)

But if you wanted this as a dedicated device where you mostly create and keep your data, right now I see it as quite a good solution.

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by sarah11918

If you like it, you certainly *can* get it world wide. You just have to order it from PC Home in Taiwan (many have had great experience doing so), find a listing on eBay (probably again from Taiwan, unless it's used) or a local Kijiji/Craigslist post of someone selling used.

It's not like some other products which have seemed impossible to import. You just have to decide whether it's worth the cost.

Status Report: I'm at least in English now.

Yes, I know that. But, if I'm going to get something like this, I'm going to want a warranty that works. And, apparently they don't honor warranty if it's out of the country that it's purchased in.

7. International Warranty and Support
ASUS does not provide warranty service outside the country where you bought the Eee Note.

http://support.asus.com/warranty.asp...hashedid=n%2Fa

[sarah11918]

Yes, ASUS won't honor a warranty, and that's why I waited until I knew for sure it wasn't coming to North America before buying. But perhaps the place you buy it from will offer some kind of warranty that at least lets you return it. (I didn't look into PC Home's terms of sale because I found a used one here in Canada before I resorted to buying that way.)

I get apple care for my macbook, but for this, I was willing to take my chances, especially since I got a barely used second hand one. But I did have to wait a couple of months for the opportunity to arise. I got lucky!

[sarah11918]

OK, so here's my pdf experience, including getting the pdfs on to and the resulting documents off of the Eee Note.

Eee Synch Software (Windows only)

The software installed on an older tablet PC running Windows 7 with no problems. It launches every time the Eee Note is connected via USB. No problems.

In order to put content on to the Eee Note, you have an option using this program, under the "Content Management" tab, to choose "IMPORT." So, you import a PDF (or any file, really) to the Eee Note via this method. The Eee Note will import the file, and then automatically based on the file type, file it itself as a "book" or "music" or "photo" etc. type of file to be accessed by the Reader, Music Player or Gallery etc. function on the device.

Downloading PDFs through the built-in browser
More excitingly for me, who is normally on a Mac, you can also download pdfs from the included default browser. When you click on a link to a pdf, it will ask you whether you want to save it to the device. When you do, it will become a "book." Unfortunately the browser is exactly the kind of sluggish browser you'd expect on a device like this, so the browser is serviceable but not exactly a pleasure to use. But if it gets me PDFs then I'll take it. (Note, if you do the whole convert to English and install community apps thing, you'll get Lightweight 2 which is a much smoother browser, and the one I prefer to actually use. But, while that browser will download PDF files to the Eee Note, I can't get the Eee Note Reader to "know" that they're there for opening.) So I know in the worst case, I can upload pdfs I want to edit to my website and download them from there. This makes me happy.

Annotating (handwriting mark up) of PDFs using the Reader
When you have a PDF open in the Reader, you have 3 annotation options: pen, highlighter and eraser. You can't change the qualities of any of these, so you get a standard pen width/colour, standard highlight (medium translucent grey) of fixed width and a fixed eraser tool. They all work, but are only visible at the zoom level in which they were created. I tested by trying 3 different zoom levels and making 3 different markups. Leaving and returning to the PDF, all notations remain intact but only one was visible at a time, depending on the zoom level I viewed the PDF at. The writing is smooth, the contrast is fine and as long as you're in good light, everything is visible. Panning around while zoomed is quite smooth, so it doesn't feel like a hardship to be zoomed in to read and need to scroll around. (Tested on a 17 page PDF) Of course, there are other features besides the handwriting available (bookmarking, selecting text etc.) but I'm just focusing on handwriting right now.

The only way the device can export these markings (except for some programs being worked on by the community right now) is by taking a snapshot of the page. This is why I say that the best use of the "Write in Reader" function is if you only need these markings visible on the Eee Note itself. If you have to zoom in to write, when you go back to full page, you won't see your writing. And the snapshot is literally a screen shot, not a representation of what might be lurking there. If you can't see it on the screen, it won't show up in a snapshot. What you would have to do is zoom to make the markings visible, then snap the screen. Of course, you might not get the whole page visible when you do this, so it doesn't work as a full-capture option.

Best use of this feature is:
- you are just making simple markups (highlighting some passages, making notes in the margin) and you don't care about finer control of pen type/size/colour
- you have a large PDF that you want to keep as one big document vs. a short document OR only a few pages you care about marking up, and you don't mind if these pages are separate from the pdf itself (OR you're happy to combine/rework these pages back into the original PDF on your computer)
- you will view the PDF mostly on the Eee itself, and mostly at the same zoom level each time. (In other words, if you are going to have to zoom in to read a 2 column PDF, then no harm in only having annotations at that zoom, since if you ever go back to read, you'll be at that zoom anyway.)

Editing PDFs in Notes

The Notes function has more control over pen tools, though it does not have a bookmark function. It does, however, have an "Insert" function and this is where you can get a little creative.

If my PDF is something like a math worksheet, and I want to handwrite in solutions, I probably want more control over the pen functions so I can vary the shades of color etc. So what I will do is take a snapshot from the Reader of the unmarked pdf, then import that snapshot into a new Note. The snapshot image will be a bit smaller than the original (there will be a border of white-ish space around the snapshot) but not unusably so.

Essentially, I have the same page image, just in the Notes program instead of the Reader program. Now I can annotate with a variety of pen tools. (And you cannot zoom in Notes, so what you see is always what you get.) But the cool thing is that because you are working in a "Note" (instead of a "book") you can export to Evernote. Notes appear to be the only things you can send to Evernote. (Otherwise, any snapshot from the Reader, which then becomes a photo in your photo album) could just be sent to Evernote directly.)

Note that because each import is a separate snapshot of each page from the original PDF, you will probably not want to do this for longer documents, or for documents that are more intended to be "read" than "written on"

Best Use of this feature is:
- you need your marked pages sent off of the Eee Note, and would find Evernote a convenient way to do that (but don't need an entire, long document's worth.) e.g. filling out a 2 - 4 page form
- you want more control over the pen tools for your mark ups (i.e. a basic, fixed pen and highlighter tool aren't enough)
- the entire page is legible (font is large enough) at 100% zoom OR you don't need to retain the original page divisions (e.g. it's OK to zoom in to particular sections, and have them become their own pages in your Note)

Getting marked up pages off the Eee Note using Evernote

Only Notes can be sent to Evernote. This process seems to work very smoothly, although it took a while to figure out how to do it. You can't be *in* the note; you have to be in your main list of notes. Then, you can select an icon beside each note that gives you options such as rename or delete. One of those options is Send to Evernote. Even when my wireless has been disconnected (I find it doesn't stay connected consistently), the device tries to send and in fact also automatically tries to connect to the network if it's disconnected. So that works quite well.

A new note shows up within a few seconds on my computer's Evernote app, and the note is a gif. I have no problems printing this to pdf the way I'd print anything to pdf, and the result is a slightly smaller than full page size pdf image. But of course, it's an image, so you'd need a program that could recapture ink strokes or OCR to try to then make the PDF searchable or handwriting recognizable. I just don't happen to have anything that does that.

So that's pretty much my M.O.

There are no dead spots on the writing surface. The ink keeps up with my handwriting no problems. I like the feel of the screen. The panning while zoomed is very slick, much better than say the Entourage Edge.

As I wrote above, if you were going to use this simply to replace a spiral bound notebook, I think you'd be very happy. After all, paper doesn't have handwriting recognition, and whatever you write has to be retyped or scanned/photocopied to be sent to someone else.

If you were going to mostly make this a dedicated device and not try to integrate your work with a computer (again, like a paper notebook), it should more than suit your needs. If you only ever need to see your annotations on this machine when you go back to reading your "books" (pdf and epub are just generically called "books"), then this would be absolutely fine for that purpose. You could bookmark a page to remind yourself there's an annotation at a different zoom level, or at 100% zoom, make a mark on the page saying which zoom level the actual annotation is written at. If you don't have to worry about printing it out as an entire document, markings visible, then I would think this solution would work just fine.

It's not, by any means, a pdf workhorse like a tablet PC or the Entourage Edge for document creation. To make notes for yourself, though, it's great.

I hope that's informative and helps people make a decision! If there's anything specific you'd like to know, I can try to figure it out.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by sarah11918

- you will view the PDF mostly on the Eee itself, and mostly at the same zoom level each time. (In other words, if you are going to have to zoom in to read a 2 column PDF, then no harm in only having annotations at that zoom, since if you ever go back to read, you'll be at that zoom anyway.)

You could work around this problem. For example, if you normally read at 100%, but you need to zoom at 300% to make a note, you could make a simple note saying "300%" while you are viewing it at 100% to know that there is an annotation at 300%.

[PF4Mobile]

Hi all

Sarah's review is quite complete, one thing should be added here: the PDF reader has a landscape mode. If you switch to this mode reading PDFs becomes very comfortable but the annotation function is reduced to NIL.

PF