Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Give me a tablet that lets me rid myself of paper and pen


Go ahead and laugh, I want a tablet with a stylus. I want to be able to use it for actual work and I don't mean Microsoft Office. I don't spend my life in the Office suite and what I really need is a tablet that uses a stylus and has a notepad application that lets me hand write notes. It doesn't even need to do character recognition that well, because I really don't care about that feature. Yes, character recognition is nice since it can allow for easy searching of notes, but my notes get filled up with arrows, drawings, code, side notes, etc and I just want those notes in raw format.

I'm picturing an application that makes my screen look just like a piece of lined notebook paper. I can write on it, type using the keyboard, paste pictures, draw, etc. I also want those notes to sink to something like Evernote. I currently use LiveScribe, but I want to be done with paper and ink and having to use cables to sync. The Samsung Note sounds like a good device, but I want it in tablet form and the reviews say the note taking isn't the best with it.

For the stylus, it needs to be fine tipped. I don't want one that causes me to write in huge block letters because then it will just look like I used my fingers again and I'm not finger painting.I want the stylus to be about the size of a ballpoint pen.

Wish List:
Full tablet size - the 10" seems fine (too small and I don't get the writing surface I want)
Stylus fits in tablet - I don't want to carry it separately
Stylus with a fine tip
Note taking application (palm rejection, online sync, free flow notes, keyboard input, cut and paste)
ICS (I would even buy it from Apple, but that is never going to happen)
Standard ports for charging and data transfers

My hope is that Samsung releases a 10" Note, which has been rumored. I hope they update the handwriting application to be better. If you are including a stylus, make sure that bad boy works perfectly. If they can nail that stuff down, count me in for one.

Non-tech rant about my frozen lunches

I'm a geek so that means that I spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer. It is well known that sitting for as long as I do isn't the most healthful. However, I do workout most days and I watch what I eat and track my calories. I have enjoyed eating a certain frozen meal that has pretty low calories for some time now. I won't mention the exact product, but it is a frozen meal that uses a steaming action and could make you feel like you are eating in a cafe (if you picture a cafe to have desks instead of tables and for each table to have 3 monitors).

I have been enjoying these for awhile when they changed their packaging for some new marketing gimmick and to associate themselves with a TV show. I didn't think much about it because what do I really care about the marketing of it, I just want to eat. However, about the fourth time I'm eating this meal, I discover that they added 40 calories (about 14% increase) to it with the change. I know 40 calories isn't much, but I need all the help I can get. Plus, I obviously couldn't even tell that anything had changed flavor-wise. I contacted the company and mentioned I wasn't happy about a company labeling themselves as healthy and then adding on 40 calories to a meal with no notice. They wrote me back stating that they thought they made it better and gave me some coupons. With or without the coupons, I wasn't going to quit eating their meals since I do like them and find them to be a good compromise as I watch what I eat, it was just disappointing to me and my geek body.