# What tablet or whatever would do all this?



## RubyToogood (Jan 4, 2012)

Or some of it anyway. I want to get my boss some device for while he's out and about so we can get rid of tons of paper. He has to go to a lot of meetings, do interviews etc, where he is referring to documents and also making his own notes. So ideally he needs something with a big enough screen to view two docs fairly comfortably side by side, or at least something that makes it very easy to switch between the two. It needs to be able to handle Word documents.

Also, what would be great is if he could write his notes with a stylus onto the tablet. Ideally there would be an optical character recognition programme (a good one) to save typing them up later.

He currently has a Blackberry, which he syncs so his calendar is up to date - it would be nice if the tablet could also sync, but that's a nicety.

Any ideas? NB he is against it being a laptop for various reasons.


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## ChrisFilter (Jan 4, 2012)

The HTC Flyer has the handwriting thing, but isn't big enough, I don't think.

TBH, for tablets, I still wouldn't look beyond an iPad. You can get styli for them - not sure re: OCR.


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## RubyToogood (Jan 4, 2012)

How well does writing with a stylus on an ipad work?


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## ChrisFilter (Jan 4, 2012)

Not sure tbh - I think some on here have used them. The verdict was 'ok' IIRC.


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## Crispy (Jan 4, 2012)

RubyToogood said:


> How well does writing with a stylus on an ipad work?


It's not designed with stylus in mind, but you can get them. Handwriting is not generally supported as an imput method.

You can't get two documents up side by side on the ipad. In fact, pretty much everything currently sold as a tablet is too small for this. You can get Windows tablet laptops, which do everything your OP requests, but they combine all the downsides of a windows laptop (weight, windows, short battery life) and bolt-on the touch.stylus functions.


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## stuff_it (Jan 4, 2012)

Can you still get those fold out/roll up keyboards you used to be able to get, or can he not type at all?


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## RubyToogood (Jan 4, 2012)

It's not that he can't type, he can't type fast enough.


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## editor (Jan 4, 2012)

RubyToogood said:


> How well does writing with a stylus on an ipad work?


Not very well. The Samsung Note does the best job of them all so far, but it's quite a small device.

You can get digital pens that let you write on paper and also digitally record the text which can then be saved as onscreen text.
E.g.: http://www.livescribe.com/en-gb/


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## Kid_Eternity (Jan 4, 2012)

Sounds like an iPad is needed. Or perhaps an ultrabook?


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## Sunray (Jan 4, 2012)

yeah, get a mac book air or a ultrabook.

No keyboard is going to get annoying quickly.


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## editor (Jan 4, 2012)

Or get the Asus Transformer and get an excellent tablet with a superb keyboard for much less.

http://eee.asus.com/eeepad/transformer-prime/features/


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## Kid_Eternity (Jan 4, 2012)

Sunray said:


> yeah, get a mac book air or a ultrabook.
> 
> No keyboard is going to get annoying quickly.



I guess given how much typing may be involved. He certainly doesn't need some piss poor netbook though...


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## RubyToogood (Jan 4, 2012)

I think part of the issue is that he doesn't necessarily have a desk or table most of the time and is writing on his lap. So a laptop (ironically) is not a very good solution.


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## Sunray (Jan 4, 2012)

I would seriously suggest a poor quality Android netbook for work would be a very poor solution.

I suggest having a go at a Mac Air or PC equivalent, they are amazingly light, which might have been the issue.  Using a pad one handed is an even more ergonomically challenging solution.You end up looking down at too steep an angle for comfort and your arm gets tired holding it.

At least with a hinged device you can adjust the angle.


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## FridgeMagnet (Jan 4, 2012)

The iPad is very good for reviewing documents and lists on the move and in odd situations. If he can't type very well even on a keyboard, though, I very much doubt he'd get on with the onscreen keyboard. There are definitely stylus note-taking apps (I use one all the time) but handwriting recognition is not great and so the notes might need to be typed up later from the onscreen scribble, though you can always just export the scribble as an image and save that wherever you save notes, it just won't be text-searchable.

I suspect the ratio of document review to text entry is going to be the issue here.


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## Kid_Eternity (Jan 4, 2012)

Good point...but I tend to agree with Sunray about avoiding the poor netbook route...


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## FridgeMagnet (Jan 4, 2012)

Kid_Eternity said:


> Good point...but I tend to agree with Sunray about avoiding the poor netbook route...


According to Ruby's post he is against it being a laptop anyway.


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## Crispy (Jan 5, 2012)

FridgeMagnet said:


> According to Ruby's post he is against it being a laptop anyway.


Then he'll have to downgrade his expectations of what he will reasonably be able to get done.


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## grit (Jan 5, 2012)

FridgeMagnet said:


> I suspect the ratio of document review to text entry is going to be the issue here.



This is the key question


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## editor (Jan 5, 2012)

Sunray said:


> I would seriously suggest a poor quality Android netbook for work would be a very poor solution.


Did anyone suggest such a thing?


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## Zabo (Jan 5, 2012)

Professional Windows with built in O.C.R.

http://www.dell.com/uk/business/p/latitude-st/pd


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## Zabo (Jan 5, 2012)

RubyToogood said:


> I want to get my boss some device for while he's out and



Even better quality - probably. I like the idea that you can have and swap a spare battery - the bug bear of almost all other tablets.

http://lifebook.uk.ts.fujitsu.com/Products/Tablet-PC/STYLISTIC-Q550.htm


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## Private Storm (Jan 5, 2012)

RubyToogood said:


> How well does writing with a stylus on an ipad work?



It's actually not too bad, but it does depend on the app you use. I use a stylus to take notes at work all the time - my handwriting is bad at the best of times, but the app copes admirably.


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## c01642 (Jan 6, 2012)

I have a Latitude ST and its an excellent piece of office kit, you have to turn off some of the aero interface settings to make it more responsive. If your going to be using for making notes the get a copy of MS onenote, its an excellent piece of software and you can do a lot with it and it integrates with all the the office products so its usually a single press to move a document/email/pic etc in a note book. The stylus is excellent and you can train the character recognition or it will learn by its self. The battery life is the only drawback at around 3.5 - 4 hours. The fujitsu claims an 8 hour runtime so it might be a better option but i havent checked the rest of the specs.


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## Sunray (Jan 6, 2012)

That seems like a much better solution, W7 is OK from a touch perspective with a stylus, its not very finger friendly.
W8 solves this, perhaps it will be upgradable to windows 8.


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## c01642 (Jan 6, 2012)

Sunray said:


> That seems like a much better solution, W7 is OK from a touch perspective with a stylus, its not very finger friendly.
> W8 solves this, perhaps it will be upgradable to windows 8.



You'll be suprised, you can do all the swip movements that you can on other tablets as well as the pinch zoom stuff etc, you dont have to use the scroll bars at all and you can also customize swipes for copy and paste etc. If you use large icons, pin you programs to the taskbar and use the ribbon in office you dont need the pen at all, i only use it for some configuration tasks and writing. People seem to knock it before even giving it a chance, a bit of customisation and its fine.


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## Sunray (Jan 6, 2012)

OK, sounds like it's better than it looks, I've not had a machine to test out.

I watched Steve Ballmer try to extol the touch interface on W7 and he resoundingly failed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eETKiAvGmc8

Perhaps he should stick to sweaty mentalisim on stage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc


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## Corax (Jan 7, 2012)

On the software side, it sounds like MS OneNote would be ideal for his purposes.  I don't know if there's an apple equivalent.


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## Sunray (Jan 8, 2012)

The iOS virtual keyboard appears to have a bit of a flaw as well.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/06/ipad_typos/


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