Going totally paperless for Uni? U'll need to follow these:
Hey everyone. I was asking the same question about the ipad up to a few months ago and i didnt have any luck once or ever as most reviews out there are on how to make very silly things like ‘drawings’ or huge notes for blind people to read on a white screen etc, but no one was being accurate or even mentioned about ‘real productivity’ for uni, and everyone was saying different things about different stylus. So I made a big research on the major Mac forums and finally sorted myself out completely, i bought an iPad 3, the right apps and the proper stylus for note-taking. That said, this is what i had to get to go to uni carrying only my ipad in my bag:
1. IPAD 3 PLEASE. (I don’t know how good ipad 2 is, sorry)
2. Notability app (4 usd on itunes store online)
3. Adonit jot pro stylus (29USD + postage, I paid 50 USD to receive mine in new zealand with a set of extra tips/or disks), google the website for adonit (its the '.net' address)
Here is the step by step and valuable hints, hope these will help u as much it did help me out for REAL ipad use in class, not just another weight to carry around.
1.For hand noting, buy adonit jot pro stylus, it’s the only decent one you can use for pen-like notes. I have spent a lot of money with expensive stylus (including Bamboo Pen) and they are all bad, very bad. A hint: stay away from all black rubber tipped stylus if you plan to use the ipad to replace pen and paper but still like to write instead of typing. you will need to touch all of the tip on the ipad to be able to write and that means your wrist will need to hold the stylus up straight while writing, big wrist pain after 5 minutes writing. If you see reviews, pay attention to the details, they never write anything in a decent font size, its always big child-like note for blind people, because the tip of most stylus are too thick to write small and fine words. Adonit is flexible and you can see where you’re writing, like pen and paper, and the fine writing looks like 5mm pens without having to zoom in and out every 5 seconds. Done!
2.I spent around 30 bucks with bad applications, so i can advise you out of experience to stay away from these ones if you like handwriting annotations that will look and feel exactly like pen and paper in all senses:
-Bamboo paper (terrible graphics, great pens but really bad quality drawing lines),
-Paper53 requires you to buy all the pens for about 3 bucks each and all u can do is make drawings, nothing else.
-Penultimate (around 7 USD): that old paper style is very cute, but after a day or two you’ll want to get out of that ‘stained recycled paper looks’ and you can’t because thats the only colour choice for pages backgrounds. Penultimate is cute, but no one likes writing in old and stained paper forever, mostly if you are using for your studies, unless you want to feel like edgar allan poe writing horror poems....
All of the above apps have beautiful thumbnail book covers, almost like real bookshelves, dont fall for it, the writing features are really bad and some of them dont even let u export your notes to your computer, only send to email. Imagine sending a 100 mb notebook to your email? Crazy stuff...
In short, buy Notability. Its less than 5 dollars and it has all the things you will need for serious writing, business, pdf, photo, scanned page annotations. The folders are easy to access too. If you have loads of powerpoint pres., simply convert them online or get a free converter to pdf and you'll b able to import them to the app with no hassle. All classes are in pdf? There you go, get notability and transfer the pdf files using itunes to transfer them to notability folder. Make annotations of every file u open! (u may need to read on their website about advanced 'howtos'.)? No more books to carry around!
3.Come on, u can easily download or buy pdf versions of textbooks anywhere online, I got even rare geology ones for less than 20 cents on ebay, ready to download and make ur notes with the ipad.
4. BUY WITH 3G and sign up for a cheap plan with an internet provider, Don’t risk being caught using an illegal router in the UNI dorm! It’s too great a risk. I bought the wi-fi version only because at uni wi-fi is free for us, so I don’t spend my own money.
5. Make backups either to dropbox, evernote or to itunes into local computer, one never knows when the ipad will be lost or broken. All the above names will look very confusing at first and will require u to create accounts with them to make backups, i personally chose the backup with itunes, in my pc at home once a day, its all i need. Not to mention that if you access your files uploaded to the online backup, it will be using your internet, costing u loads of money.
6. Use the ipad cameras as a scanner. Ive been doing extensive library visits and taking photos of the pages of books I need copies of. Put the book on the table, point the camera on the page and shoot. No need to scan or use a pc, after taking the photo, go back to notability and add the photos of the books to a new note and voilat, u have all ur important docs ready to receive handwritten notes on top! This will save u a lot of money with books and photo copies in the long and short terms.
Cheers everyone and hope this helps u make up ur mind. I love paper and pen, but the new ipad together with adonit jot pro stylus is saving me a lot of money and time, by the end of the year I will have saved the bloody 900 I spent with apple!!!!!! Good luck to all.
