Samsung Note 8

[thinkpad]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Couldn't hold back anymore, just ordered one together with the Book Case Cover. Should arrive next week.

I have to admit I also got one. I bought it mainly for taking notes and so far it has exceeded my expectations. After about two weeks use I'm biased towards LectureNotes. It feels so much more powerful.

It took me a while to get all the settings right, it comes with a ton of settings and customizations making it a little daunting at first but once you start trying things out there's no going back.

I've even programmed the pen to do various actions when I click the button. 1 click to switch to eraser and 2 clicks to switch to the cutter. Very handy feature.

First I thought why doesn't LectureNote have nice highlighting pens like S-Note. Then I started playing around and noticed the customizable pen-settings. You just make some changes to the pen thickness and opacity and set it to draw behind other colors and voila you have a highlighter pen in just the right thickness and color that you as a user determine yourself.

I could go on and on about the features I like. I might agree that S-Note seems to make your handwriting smoother but I experience this to be more of a settings thing. S-Note comes with better pre-defined settings while LectureNotes lets you do much more customizations.

For the first couple of days I used S-Note then I switched over to LectureNotes and I'm not likely to go back.

Both applications are great but for me the way I can customize the look and feel of LectureNotes makes it a winner.

[Kumabjorn]

S-Note has one advantage over LectureNotes, you can convert handwriting to digital text. in LectureNotes you have to enter that through an onscreen keyboard. If you have lots of notes you will need to tag them so they don't get lost in a mountain of ink.

[thinkpad]

True, handwriting recognition is a big plus for S-Note, but I've noticed that when I write something I rather just keep it in handwriting because I scribble all over the page with arrows, highlights and boxes etc. I do however see the potential if LectureNote would be able to convert it to text in the background making it searchable, so you are right as for now I need to add a lot of tags but that is a minor hindrance

[thinkpad]

Just to show one thing I like with the device. Taking freehand screenshots of anything on the screen:

Hover the pen over the screen, press the button and start marking the freehand area you want to take a screenshot of. When the start point connects with the endpoint the area is automatically saved to the clipboard.

You can then import the picture to your program of liking and continue the editing or just save the picture for future reference.

As a quick example:
The picture included was taken from two screenshots on how to configure the stylus button setup in LectureNotes. I imported the two screenshots into LectureNotes and added some arrows and steps. I then made a new screenshot of the result from LectureNotes. (One thing I haven't figured out yet is how to make the freehand capture less wobbly, it would be nice if it could just draw a rectangle around the area to catch. Currently you have to be very sturdy on your hand and at the same time press the button while marking the area to catch)



I could just as easily have imported the picture to Skitch, PicSay or any other app supporting image import to continue the editing it's only a question of preferences.

[thinkpad]

I would be interested to know the pen settings others use for LectureNotes.
Here's my main pen setting for black and highlight:

Black:

1. Line-width: 1.50
2. Alpha: 1.000
3. Softness: 0.80

Highlight:

1. Line-width: 23.25
2. Alpha: 0.333
3. Softness: 0

[Kumabjorn]

When doing a highlight try setting it to behind text.

[Kumabjorn]

So, I got my Note 8 yesterday. I'm Using pen input right now. I also own a Tab 2 7.0 and it is significantly bigger. Granted, I have small hands, but I can barely get one hand around it and hold it while writing on the screen, it you have big man hands I don't think it would be a big problem though. The screen and battery life are excellent, the stylus is slightly different from my other Notes.

[rkw]

I ran across the new brown/black color for the N5110 the other night. I made a command decision, soon as my pearl white version gets here tomorrow it is going back because I ordered the brown-black.

I've never been a fan of white devices, especially those with a wider bezel. First thing I've done with my Kindles is to buy a black TPU/silicone case to hid that bright white around the page.

I will say the white on the N8 isn't awful it was simply a pill I was willing to swallow. However now I don't have to. So again I am waiting...oh, and I did not get the same great price I did on the white one. But I did get the Samsung book case as a bundle. From what I've seen in photos that Samsung case is very thin and seems to enhance the look of the device, a bit s-Pen-dy though...har-har-funny, I made a pun??

I also lucked into a Skinomi clear skin on Amazon for just $0.99 + $2.99 shipping.
ht http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

That price I see is now higher and they are almost sold out. I've run across this before on Amazon. A company has a new product they want to sell quickly in hopes of getting a lot of new positive reviews after which they raise the price to normal. I once got a great portable battery backup for $20 that now is over $100 under the same idea. I think it's a bit more democratic as well as less controversial than the Amazon Vine program....oops I digress...but watch for those deals when shopping the site. They are rare but if you see one, especially when sold by the actual manufacturer of the product, grab it, worst case you return it but in the mean time it can cost a ton less.

I've used their skins on devices before, my Asus Transformer Infinity for example, and they do a nice job of protecting the surface of the device. In the case of my TF Infinity it has a brushed aluminum body. That aluminum will scratch if you look at it sharply while it's resting on pillows. But I went nuts and bought two of their wood grain skins for the Transformer , the light and the dark. I then mixed light & dark parts and the effect is a ctually pretty classy. But cripes those skins cost me over $50, I know but I was weak and splurged. It does impress my boss and the kids at Starbucks though so it was worth it??

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

But for that $4 the clear skin will be a great deal compared to the price of the patterned and colored skins. Plus it will add the level of class akin to the clear vinyl covers some put on the furniture in their living room in decades gone by. And we all know just how classy that look is.

Oh, I did learn something if you are looking for a different or back-up s-pen. There is apparently an offset if you are using a Wacom pen bought separately. That on-screen offset ranges from just a teeny bit to several mm or bit more with no way to calibrate the device. But what I learned Wacom makes two versions of their Bamboo Feel pen. The one we want for the Note 8 (N5100 or N5110) is the one that comes in a BLUE box. I did not order an extra pen yet as I want to make sure my initial feel for the N8 remains after real world use. I can see it may be likely I get one for times when I might be penning longer entries. The downside of the extra pen is it does not slide into the device's hide-e-hole so odds of me losing that $50 pen are in favor of the house. Why is it we never lose the inexpensive or cheap pens? Law of nature I suppose???

http://www.wacom.eu/index2.asp?pid=9221&spid=5&lang=en
http://bamboostylus.wacom.com/compatibility/

OT, I could have really, REALLY used the N8 today. I was buried at work and have notes splattered all over my office. Can't wait to corral that entropy. Soon it will be relocated out of sight onto my N8. Heck, people might actually stop teasing me about my office clutter, errr, I mean, system...I really use a lot of quicky notes as the day progresses. My boss likes all the notes though and now he might wonder if I've gone R.O.A.D rather than trying to become more mobile, efficient, sleek, streamlined & obviously sexy appearance.

OK, I rambled, long past few days with little sleep just had to check into this thread. Love all the tips for sure. I just have to wait until Monday for the new darker Note 8 to be delivered. Maybe UPS will goof up and deliver it quickly for a change. Our local UPS service is, interesting is a good description. They are very, very, ahem, interesting around here.

[Kumabjorn]

I have a few other S-Pen that I will try on the Note 8 and see how they work, the stylus inch kissed have a somewhat different tip and there were no replacements included.

[rkw]

Was cruising YouTube looking at cases and what not for the N8. I stumbled across some reviews. This one linked is side by side with the Note II and it's Super Amoled panel...

[yt]kOSczSIdC4g[/yt]

To my eye on my tf700 the N8 actually looks much better. Also, I had no idea the Amoled displays had screen flicker. That really caught my eye...and I still like the warmth of the color cast on the N8 compared to the colder color cast of the Note II. Still I am thinking if I like the N8 enough I could see myself also getting a Note III if it's as nifty.

Oh, fyi warning...it's not the best review, somewhat dull and boring in fact but the pain is worth seeing the screens together.

[talaivan]

I bought one, used it for 2 weeks, and returned it. I got it for the stylus, but found that the iPad works much better with my Adonit stylus than the Note 8 does with the built-in one. I use Note Plus on the mini, and that does an excellent job of converting handwriting to text. In addition, you can select the text you want converted -- which you can't do on the Note 8. Beyond this, I found that many of the programs (e.g. Dish Anywhere) that work well on the mini have serious problems on the Note 8. I came to feel that Android is simply inferior to iOS for most things. One exception, however -- I used Aldiko Premium as an eReader and, because of the higher screen resolution on the Note, that is better than any of the readers on the Mini. I'm hoping the next iPad Mini has retina. I should add that handwriting on the iPad with Notes Plus looks much much better than handwriting that is possible on the Note (I used LectureNotes and S-Note). That is because Notes Plus (and some other iOS apps) allows you to write in a magnified window at the bottom of the screen.

[rkw]

Originally Posted by talaivan

I bought one, used it for 2 weeks, and returned it. I got it for the stylus, but found that the iPad works much better with my Adonit stylus than the Note 8 does with the built-in one. I use Note Plus on the mini, and that does an excellent job of converting handwriting to text. In addition, you can select the text you want converted -- which you can't do on the Note 8. Beyond this, I found that many of the programs (e.g. Dish Anywhere) that work well on the mini have serious problems on the Note 8. I came to feel that Android is simply inferior to iOS for most things. One exception, however -- I used Aldiko Premium as an eReader and, because of the higher screen resolution on the Note, that is better than any of the readers on the Mini. I'm hoping the next iPad Mini has retina. I should add that handwriting on the iPad with Notes Plus looks much much better than handwriting that is possible on the Note (I used LectureNotes and S-Note). That is because Notes Plus (and some other iOS apps) allows you to write in a magnified window at the bottom of the screen.

yup, Apple seems to have indeed burned through all the Alpha Consumers and now can only deliver omega consumers.

Seriously glad you found a device that fits your needs. Enjoy it...

[thinkpad]

After a couple of weeks frequent use of LectureNotes I feel I have good grasp of the things that work and the things that can be improved.

One thing that I miss is an easy/fast way to access the different pages quickly, I know there's the "Netbook content"-menu but this forces me to another view, I would much rather see a solution like the one in ezPDF-reader where all the pages are in a horizontal scroll-bar at the bottom of the screen, quickly accessible by the flick to either left or right.

[Kumabjorn]

Have you tried contacting the developer? He is usually very responsive.

[thinkpad]

Thanks for the tip Kumabjorn, I will do that. I have a couple of other suggestions I will present to him as well.