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The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

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Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#441

Post by _carbyau_ »

Johnny555 wrote: post #436
NikolaNovak wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed that early on; 15 years ago, I was keeping notes on a "feature phone with sliding keyboard". I was pulled by my manager for being disrespectful after the meeting; I showed him the notes and demonstrated that I was by far the most attention / had the best retention / was most involved in the meeting, but still... the message was - it looks unprofessional, stop it. Thing is: * My handwriting sucks (I liter…

My handwriting sucks too, and much of it is nearly illegible, but I find that I have much better retention if I keep written notes rather than typing. Even if some of my notes are difficult (or even impossible) to read, it's still sufficient to help remember what I felt so notable that I wrote it down. I realize that everyone's not the same, but studies have shown that writing leads to better conceptual recall (but t…

My wife's version of a shopping list is a bunch of lines of "running writing Ws". The typed approximation being

Wwwwwwwww

Wwwwwwwww

...etc

At the shops, I have no idea but she knows what she wrote.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#442

Post by oggy »

I bought a Remarkable 2 for note taking and annotating scientific papers. As far as it's promise of "better paper", I think it's only partly fulfilled. I haven't returned it, but I'm sadly also not using it regularly.

It's obviously better than paper since you don't end up with stacks of printed articles. The feel of reading and writing is also exactly like paper, which is great. You get some basic select/cut/paste functionality, which improves on paper. But.

I used it to take notes at work, create simple TODO lists etc. The issue with this is that the resulting notes are way harder to navigate than a simple paper notebook, as the software doesn't support even basic bookmarks. Whereas with paper I can add bookmarks as I please, a paper organizer notebook allows me to navigate my calendar easily etc. I'm still amazed that the RM software offers absolutely no functionality for such navigation. This is a huge drawback for me.

When using it to annotate PDFs, the app offers you a few tools (pencil, pen, eraser, etc). Ideally you'd like to fit the article on the remaining portion of the screen, possibly cropping the margins if your the article is created for a different page size and your eyesight is as bad as mine. But the support for this sucks, as the toolbox always covers a piece of the document, so you end up having to hide/unhide it constantly.

Next, while the pen feels quite good, and feels almost as precise as a real pencil, I find the eraser quite hard to control. It erases an area somewhere around the end of the pen, but unlike a physical eraser, you don't see its boundaries. There's no support for stroke-based erasing. Finally, stating the obvious, the device is black-and-white. But I find different colors helpful when annotating papers, or creating sketches of systems etc.

So right now I can't really recommend the device, but I'm still holding onto mine hoping it will improve. I think the hardware can serve as a basis for better paper - but I think the software would need many of the features of http://www.styluslabs.com/ to get there

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#443

Post by mbreese »

codethief wrote: post #174
michaelmior wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. I got the reMarkable 1 pretty early and I've been debating ordering the reMarkable 2. I've heard almost exclusively good things about it, but right now I'm happy enough with the original device. I hadn't heard of Supernote until seeing this comment, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on when I think about upgrading. I'm not sure what you mean when you say the RM2 has "pretty much none" w…

> I'm not sure what you mean when you say the RM2 has "pretty much none" when it comes to PDF reading and annotation capabilities. Well, all you can basically do is scribble within a PDF. The RM2 doesn't offer proper PDFs annotations and it doesn't even come close to the Supernote in terms of other useful features like bookmarking, digests, etc. > EDIT: Wow. Looked at the A5X and for the price compared to the RM2, it…

This is going to sound like an odd question -- does the Supernote do too much? Or is it still simple to use?

I've been wavering on a RM2. I already have an iPad with the Paperlike screen cover. And I absolutely love writing on it. However, it has two downsides for me that keep me from using it all the time for notes:

1) It's still pretty heavy

2) It does too much. Seriously, I also have a keyboard for it, and there are tons of apps that I can use. This is the problem -- because it can do so much, I can't just use it for only notes.

I never heard of the Supernote until today, but it sounds great. I'm just worried that it might do a little too much? I'd love to have a note taking device that I used as much as I used to use a paper notebook.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#445

Post by salamandersauce »

sanderjd wrote: post #157
wastholm wrote: post #111

I bought a Remarkable 2 a month or two ago because I wanted a cool hackable e-ink Linux computer. But instead I immediately started using it as an e-book and document reader and note-taking pad, and nothing else. And, so far at least, that's perfect. The screen is beautiful (a bit gray, but the black is really black so the contrast is still good), the device is thin and reasonably light, I only have to charge it once…

Man, I got the thing because I wanted to use it as an ebook and document reader, but it's totally failed at that for me. I spent hours working on a decent system for getting books on the thing and came up empty. I think it would be good for reading and taking notes on academic papers, but I mostly read books, and I couldn't figure out how to get most books on there. A lot of this is Amazon's fault for kindle being a…

This is what makes the Android eInk devices better IMO. Yeah, note taking is a touch worse but they are way better at reading as you can just grab the Kindle, Kobo, Google Play Books, Libby, Comixology app etc. And getting things off and on is a breeze because it supports MTP and cloud service apps like Dropbox and OneDrive.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#446

Post by jgon »

pjerem wrote: post #167

I loved my Remarkable but I returned it. I was pretty ok with the "it's just note taking" paradigm. But the problem for me is that it should be "just a note taking" device but with advanced note taking features, not just "nothing more than a sheet of paper". The number one issue for me was the poor navigation experience. Going from one page to another was a pain if they were not contiguous. This could have been solve…

The new software update lets you hit a button to take you to a "notebook overview" type page, where you can see all the pages in the notebook laid out in a quasi-grid. You can then tap whichever page you want to navigate to. Of course there's always complications with determining which page to use, having to scroll if your notebook has 1000 pages, etc, etc, but I think it might hit the 90% case you're looking for with trying to quickly switch between non-contiguous pages without having to scroll through the whole notebook.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#447

Post by desireco42 »

fastball wrote: post #431
DenisM wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put a stack of 3x4 index cards in you back pocket, and write thing down as needed. In the evening, (eg when you pull keys/wallet out of the pocket) review the cards briefly and toss the used once into trash unless you really need to keep one. This is a low-commitment device that still achieves half the benefits of really writing things down.

Shameless plug, but if you like note-taking on index cards but are still looking for a slightly more digital solution to the problem, we've[1] built an online note-taking platform that is based around digital markdown note-cards, which is a bit different from most other digital solutions which are usually document or bullet-list based. I realize that many on HN want to "own" their data a little more than you typicall…

Wonderful! I even like Basecamp inspired design.

And then I get to referral scheme :). Eww.

But everything else is pretty solid, I will give it a try, love the idea so far.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#448

Post by DrJaws »

asdf123wtf wrote: post #420
unethical_ban wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that as e-ink gets better and better refresh rates, that having it as a grayscale monitor for things like textbooks/markup and browsing the web will make sense. Having an e-ink tablet to browse HN, check email and read the morning paper sounds pretty nice. I used to get the NYTimes delivered to my Kindle each morning.

Forget grayscale, E-ink is going color. Early color devices are on the market already. And there are displays in the works that are fast enough to render video. I'm really looking forward to the future of e-ink displays.

yeah, call me in 5 years when those devices are no the crap they are today with their own subpixel problems where everything is blurry unless you use giant size font's .

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#449

Post by tunesmith »

CosmicShadow wrote: post #260

I'm always super intrigued by the reMarkable 2, but I think it's because it paints an image of the type of person I think it'd be cool to be, someone who can just write down notes and draw stuff with a really cool, slim device. Someone who carries around moleskines and uses them, instead of just buying so many of them in different shapes and leaving them in a drawer packed to the brim with notebooks. The problem keep…

I bought a reMarkable 2 after being on the waiting list, and returned it a couple of weeks later. I just couldn't deal with the latency.

Re: The rise of E Ink Tablets and Note Takers: reMarkable 2 vs Onyx Boox Note Air

#450

Post by lima »

gpm wrote: post #150
codethief wrote: post #9

> Later this month I'll take a look at Supernote which already has a enthusiastic community and promises to have a rich API for 3rd parties to explore and expand. I tried the Remarkable 2 for a month but ended up returning it and ordering the Supernote A5X instead – I couldn't be happier! Its main advantages (IMO): - The Supernote acts as a regular USB mass storage device, so syncing files (w/o resorting to the cloud…

> Sure, you can "hack" your RM2 but the chances that the next official update will then completely brick your device are rather high – /r/RemarkableTablet/ is full of these stories No... they're approximately 0. The next update will wipe out your modifications, everything outside of the home directory is wiped, but the device will still work. People bricking their devices are people actively doing things that brick t…

> People bricking their devices are people actively doing things that brick their devices

... such as flashing their own bootloaders or overwriting the system partitions. This isn't required for any of the fancy mods :)

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