smileman

i haven't found a review of the Galaxy Note 10.1 focussed on how it works for an academic who reads a lot of journal articles (mostly PDFs, some are web pages) and makes notes about and on the articles. is anyone using for this purpose and how is it going?

this question was also posted in the general tablet forum here:

choosing a tablet for pdf annotation, pdf reading, sorting etc and general academic use

andarchist

New here, signed up just for this post, might stick around, but I have something to say.

I am an Economics PhD student and have found the Note quite useful. Obviously the Note is going to lack some features that are useful for academic work that my desktop and macbook have, but it has many features that are very appreciated. Listed below:

• The S Pen is fantastic. It is great for taking margin, lecture, etc notes.
• In regards to margin notes in PDFs, ezPDF is the program to get. You can annotate PDFs without any problem and has many customizable settings to set your pen thickness and color, as well as your highlighter. ezPDF was like $4.
• In regards to lectures: I use an App called LectureNotes and LectureRecording to record and write notes during lectures, workshops, class, etc. You can set up folders and notebooks for all your classes, seminars, etc. Combined these two apps were about $5.
• There is a LaTex editor called VerbTex available that is really fantastic if you are doing something with mathematical formulas, Greek lettering, etc. I combine this with Detexify to identify the symbols. Both have paid versions, but I get by fine without.
• I found OfficeSuite Pro to be the best for editing and creating word documents. You can insert footnotes, unfortunately no header support yet. Much of what you create will need to be touched up later, but OfficeSuite allows you to edit and get projects started. As for creating presentations and excel files, I haven't had any experience with that, but all the reviews say it does it fine. So far I have to take their word for it.
• Spotify. While I'm being all scholarly and whatnot, I can jam out with music in the background.

I think those are the main points. I've been very happy with it. Unfortunately, the multiscreen ability is very limited, but might be helpful if you are browsing a website and taking notes or something.


All-in-all it is probably the best tab for academia. I almost bought one that would have cost more than $100 less and I also considered the iPad. But, when I paid closer attention to the Note, I decided to give it a shot ordering it from Amazon so I could return it hassle free if I didn't like it. So far, I still have it and Amazon doesn't, so it seems to have been working out.

smileman

andarchist,

thanks for your thoughts, very helpful.

i was trying out the Note at a story yesterday and one thing that concerned me, which had nothing to do with the Note, was how many of the econ PDFs (I'm an econ PhD too) I found on Google Scholar have hard to read fonts. i wasn't logged into my school's VPN and not using JSTOR, etc. but the readily accessible PDFs that are linked in Google Scholar, so i'm wondering if this is regular problem or simply due to the poor quality scanned PDFs that are found outside the official journal sites?

a second question for you is how do you think the Note 10.1 will stack up versus a full blown Windows 8 tab, like the Asus Vivo? it also has the Wacom digitizer/stylus, has an 11+" screen, and since it runs full Windows has EndNote, Office, etc. it was just reported that the AMD Windows 8 tablets will even run all Android apps. so i'm wondering if the only downside with going with a Windows 8 tab is the price (eg. the Asus Vivo is supposed to run about $300 more than the Note 10.1).

last, have you tried iAnnotate?

thanks!