Re: [NTLK] Newton- as sole repository for class notes

From: Victor Rehorst (victor_at_newtontalk.net)
Date: Wed Oct 30 2002 - 07:43:16 EST


Brian wrote:
>
> So, I've mostly used my 2100 as a little laptop plus some specialized apps,
> as some of you will no doubt know from my posting history.
>
> I've generated some interest in the Newt among coworkers and some students
> are interested it it as a notetaking device. They've played with my spare
> 2100 a little.
>
> I know some of the people on the list have used the Newt almost exclusively
> for their class notes at one time or another; any experience along those
> lines (serious stationery use) that I could pass along would be
> appreciated.

I took notes for most of my university classes on my 130, and then my 2100. I
found that I could keep up pretty well with my profs in just about any
situation. I didn't use it for math courses, though, more as a personal
preference thing. For all my philosophy and CS courses though, it was great.
  For CS I switched between text and sketches or shapes all the time. I
sometimes printed my notes via my Apple PLW NTR, which was really nice to be
able to do. For philosophy, I mixed lists and just notes a lot, so I created
two expansions: 'bul' gave me a bullet symbol followed by a space, and 'ind'
gave me four spaces for indenting a point.

I never had a problem with data integrity with Notes. Large notes sometimes
got slow, and there was a glitch sometimes when I would correct a word at the
bottom of a large note, and after making the correction the Newt would scroll
back to the top of the note - leaving me frantically tapping the down arrow
while my prof lectured on.

I sometimes used a keyboard as well. I did way better than the guy who used
Graffiti in my Medieval Philosophy class, and was more flexible than the guy
who used a Visor with a Stowaway (since he had to stick with plain text, while
I could switch to sketch easy and draw a table, he had to resort to ASCII art).

My 130 was slow. Most of the time I just used sketches to take notes. It got
slow after 5-6 screens worth.

-- 
Victor Rehorst - victor_at_newtontalk.net - chuma_at_chuma.org
NewtonTalk list administrator - http://www.newtontalk.net
Will help you with your list problems - as long as you're nice.

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