Tablet PC doesn’t work for Chem class

18Jan/056

Tablet PC doesn’t work for Chem class

DAMMIT, if I hear Scoble talk about using the Tablet PC to take notes in chem class I’m gonna ~~pop a gasket~~ sing a song.

Point #1) Unlike all of the Tablet PC wonks, I’ve actually TAKEN chemistry classes. In fact I had 3 years of friggin chem classes. Multiple chem classes. I’ve got about 4 3″ binders full of chemistry notes. I’ve TAKEN lots of chemistry notes.

Point #2) The table PC relies on a digizer. That small pen. The tablet PC tracks the pen and translates the coordinates. There are many, many things that determine how well the tablet PC is able to track the pen.

I’ve tried using the tablet PC’s in stores. ~~In fact, I tried drawing specific molecules at the same speed that I used to take notes in college. It couldn’t keep up with me.~~. When I tried a Tablet PC recently, it was able to keep up with me. When you are drawing a chemical structure, all those little lines are important. If they don’t show up when you draw them, you’ll have problems on the test and during labs. (think violent release of pressure.). I don’t really think you would want ANY kind of laptop of notebook in a college chemistry lab given that most of the soles of my shoes in college were eaten away by various things on the floor. Even most of my paper notes have some sort of stain on them.

There are some advantages that a tablet PC has over a regular laptop or desktop. I don’t think taking chemical notes is one of them.

updated after I tried a newer Tablet PC at a recent geek dinner

Filed under: General, Technology Leave a comment

http://jacquelinepassey.blogs.com/ Jacqueline

I can see how the corrosive chemicals thing might be an issue, but which Tablets have you tried that can’t keep up with your notetaking?

I’ve been taking math and econ notes with it for the past two weeks and the only problem I’ve noticed is a slight degradation the quality of my handwriting because the pen slips on the screen more than pencil slips on paper.

What I *really* like, though, is that I can change colors with a tap of the pen, or erase entire lines using the stroke eraser. Also only having to carry around 4 pounds of Tablet versus many more pounds of notebooks, textbooks, papers, etc. is heaven for my back.
http://jacquelinepassey.blogs.com/ Jacqueline

Oh and I’m using a Toshiba M205.
http://scoble.weblogs.com Robert Scoble

My dad has a PHd (Electrical Engineering, but he used to desig nukes, among other things, and did materials design for Lockheed) and says the Tablet PC is great for taking notes on chemical molecules.

Of course I have a Toshiba M200 too. It keeps up with everything I throw at it.
http://www.lazycoder.com Scott

Apparently, I haven’t tried the Toshiba M200 line.

Robert: Was your dad taking notes at lecture speed or drawing them out for his own use later at a slower pace? Most professors I had were real motormouths and it was tough to keep up with pencil and paper, even with my little trick of throwing out vowels in words. Most of the time when the table PC I was trying out, I don’t remember the model, missed it was a shorter line. The crossbar in “COH” or when I was drawing out a long carbon chain it would skip some of the bonds, making it look like two C-chains instead of one long one.

Jacqueline: I agree that the weight of all those textbooks and notebooks is an issue. I swear I list to the right a little bit after hauling around all my books and notes for 5 years. Thankfully once I got into the graduate classes, the books got smaller because less was known about the subject. I could see it working well for equations since the symbols are similar to letters.

P.S. Most of the stuff in lower level chemistry labs is pretty harmless. The stuff that isn’t harmless, like 16M Nitric acid, you KNOW is bad stuff and it gets cleaned up pretty quickly. In organic chem labs, almost everything in there is harmful to plastic. I could see the tablet PC as a good overall computer for a non-chem/biology major type student. But I don’t see how it would work in a real chem or biology lab. I don’t know of anyone here at the Hutch that is using them in their labs. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any though.
http://studenttabletpc.blogs.com Tracy

I don’t have any chemistry labs to try my tablet in (I have a couple chemistry classes though and I don’t have the problems you mention about the pen not keeping up [and I don't have a toshiba, I have an Acer 302]), but in my Geology labs, there’s just some trouble in actually using the tablet around rocks and minerals that scratch glass, and I don’t even have a glass screen (yay plastic…). All it would take is a little grain on the tip of the pen and poof, scratch city. Anyway, for the same reason I have a paperback book in my backpack even though I could easily put it on the computer, I have real paper labs; some things are just better at some things. (That was a horrible last line. Sorry…long day…can’t think)
Sam

So does this mean that if i go for a newer tablet then it will be ok for Chemistry classes?