Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe they aren't as effective as hand written notes. but in my case Neatly typed, well organized notes using OneNote 2003 were more effective than hastily hand written mostly illegible notes.
The reason hand written notes are more effective is that it helps towards better learning just by writing the thing down and slowing it to a pace where your mind can make memories. Even if afterwards the notes are completely illegible, I would argue it's more effective than typed notes.
I spent my first year and a half of college at a community college. They arent exactly known for their academic rigor. However first semester I took World History 1. There were only like 3 tests and 5 Quizzes that made up our grade. The tests were not multiple choice or fill in the blank like some professors might do. They were several short essay questions and a long form essay. You would have a choice of like 6 short essay questions which you had to pick 3 to answer. and then had a choice of 3 long essay topics from which we had to pick one.
The Professor about 2 weeks prior to the exams gave us a handout of 12 short essay questions and 6 long essay questions. He randomized the questions that were on the test so that while we knew what questions were possibly going to be on the test we did not know which ones would. He also expected us to know both the facts such as people, places, dates and events. but also the concepts. If you only got the concepts but did not know the factual material you were in trouble and vice versa.
I took all my notes in that class on a laptop using OneNote 2003 (It came out right at the start of my first semester in college.)
As the semester went on I got into the habit of skimming over my previous notes for that class and adding annotations about connections to other concepts and facts in the class. I also would review my notes at the end of the day while it was still fresh in my mind, but had taken some time to digest the material to add things that I missed or make my notes more clear.
When it came time to start preparing for the tests the first thing I did was take my notes, create a new section in my notebook just for that test. I took all my notes for that test and instead of organizing them by lecture, i condensed them into a more concise and coherent form that linked all the different concepts and facts together. I also outlined my strategy for each question. Then I printed it out and put it in a ring binder, as I refined my notes, I printed out new copies for the binder. I probably printed about 200 pages for each test.
Maybe Writing them out would have been more effective for memorization in most cases. But to me there was simply too much information to memorize in one pass. and Wrot memorization was not going to cut in this class. I also think the fact that I was constantly working with those notes and synthesizing new material from them, replaced alot of the feedback loop of writing it all out by hand.
I learned a lot of history in that class. But more importantly I learned how to interpret requirements, sift through large amounts of information, making connections between that information and developing strategies to accomplish a goal.