twpensyl

I'm doing research in theoretical computer science, so my research for the most part involves a lot of playing with math. I end up with large stacks of scratch paper, containing ideas or derivations which may or may not be useful later. So far I have not been very successful in organizing my notes (read: piles of paper littering my room), and it is hard to actually find anything later. If I have solid, important ideas, I will rewrite them more concisely and orderly, or even better write them up in LaTeX, but that would be time consuming to do for everything. I've never used a tablet, but the idea of using a stylus to take notes electronically seems like it could help. Ideally it would allow me to organize, manipulate, store, and retrieve all my notes more easily. (This could be used for classes as well, but class notes have inherent structure and so are easier to keep organized) Can anyone who's used a tablet give their thoughts: Is writing on a tablet easy/natural/frustrating; do you find yourself preferring to write on paper? What kind of tablets are best for extensive handwriting math equations? Do I need an iPad, or is will something cheaper suffice? Will this likely improve my efficiency, or should I just learn to organize my paper notes better? Thanks

PhD Apps (focus in theory) Admitted: NCSU, UNC, UMD (woot!) Waiting: Gatech (ACO)...