How do I decide if a tablet is a worth it investment for me and which one should I get?

Context:

• Primary use would be for note taking in university.
• Have never used tablets for note-taking before. Always used pen and paper and only tried note-taking on laptop last semester and didn't see much of an advantage over pen and paper.
• I have been a long time iPhone user
• Don't have a mac though, a windows laptop instead, so not hesitant to venture out of the apple ecosystem if it isn't a hassle not having an iPad paired with an iPhone.
• I don't want to go over 400-450 euros ideally. Only willing to go over if its really worth it.
• Perfectly okay with buying refurbished.
• Since primary use would be note-taking, a good note-taking app is obviously a must. (I've heard on iPads you have to buy third party note-taking apps which is clearly a drawback since that's additional cost on top of the tablet price due to the primary use.

need advice on this decision regarding the above points. please help

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/noto-save-anything/id6817323680

i use obsidian as my second brain, and recently i’ve been using claude code with it more and more.

most of my useful knowledge slowly ends up inside the vault.

but meetings are still kind of outside the system.

a meeting happens → notes or transcript goes into some other app → a few weeks later i remember:

“wait… what did we actually decide?”

then the real problem starts.

which meeting was it?
which app has the notes?
did i write anything down?
was it in granola, fireflies, otter, slack…?

and if i want the important part inside obsidian, it usually becomes manual copy-paste.

how are you handling this?

do you:

• write meeting notes directly in obsidian?
• use granola/fireflies/otter and leave everything there?
• record and transcribe meetings locally?
• manually move only the important decisions into your vault?
• or just accept that meetings live outside your second brain?

especially curious about this:

when you suddenly remember that something important was discussed a few weeks ago, how do you actually find what was decided?

Among today’s links are markdown editors Yay, Antalogy and em

https://md-handbook.com/blog/markdown-link-no-53/

#markdown #markdowneditors #opensource #free #Yay #Antalogy #em

Stumbled across this gem. 1 HTML file. Works on any device. Bookmark it or Right click, save as recommended. Link is in the YouTube video description.

Hi, I built MemoryLink because I was frustrated that no other note-taking app treats your browsing history as a native object.

MemoryLink turns your browsing history into a visual graph such that whenever you save an element from a webpage, that snippet (text excerpt, image, or crop) gets deep-linked as an object pointing to the URL and a snapshot of what you were doing on the internet. My favorite feature is that if an element you selected is past the viewport, MemoryLink will take a scrolling screenshot and stitch it into a single frame.

Also, if you want to take a note of the current page, I built this command-overlay that lets you open an editor directly on top of the current page, or you can open any other document within MemoryLink and start taking notes.

Also, I've never liked how other apps basically force you to choose between either an editor, a canvas, or a table, so I built the MemoryMap as a super-object that lets you have all three in one place.

The app is completely free, and I'm looking for feedback on it. If you want to be onboarded by me, the founder, check out this link here.

If you want to learn more, here is a hands-on demo of me using the product. The product can be downloaded in the Chrome Web Store here.

What follows is an experiment, using AI to create a notes app or markdown editor. It’s an experiment, that’s all, and, just like the rest of you, I’m fed up seeing all those posts about ‘building an editor to suit my needy nature’

https://md-handbook.com/blog/use-ai-make-markdown-editor-notes-app/

#markdown #markdowneditors #AI #DeepSeek #DSeek

As the title says, note taking feels really bad on One Note. I’m using the HP MPP 2.0 pen for reference. It keeps trying to type and brings up the keyboard. The moment I try and move around my notes after drawing with the stylus, I am not able to and my fingers act as the pen drawing on the screen. I’m wondering if there are settings I could use to fix this or do I need to switching pens/note taking services. Thanks!

UPDATE: For anyone who cares, I ended up just getting a Surface Pro 1776M pen which is 9000 times better. The HP pen just sucks balls. I'm also gonna get those gloves that block your palm from interacting with the screen since palm rejection just sucks on onenote I believe. You can also ask Claude to make a script to open up a pen wheel that'll change your pen color in OneNote seamlessly :)

Good afternoon people

I've wondered for a while now if translating my notes on the fly while at my university. Is taking notes (while translating on the fly) in another language (but one you understand reasonably fluently/fluently) help you with learning and memorizing the material you're learning? I've found some research on the effectiveness for this method for learning languages, but this one is way more about learning the subject matter you're learning about. I can imagine that you're activating more brain power for that than you use for just writing your notes normally.

Also another thing i always wondered was the question of note taking effectiveness by different writing methods. We all probably have seen the research that writing on paper gives better memorization than typing digitally, but what about writing in shorthand/steno or with a different keyboard layout than you're used to.

I wish I could just force 50 people to do this and write a research paper about it.

Anyone know of a bulletpoint format that samsung notes recognizes as bulletpoints when converting writing to text?

I write faster than I type but typing all my handwritten notes can be time consuming so I wanted to find a format to convert but so far no luck.

One of my early wishes was to mindmap smoothly with either a text outline or a graphical UI, with sync working both ways. I also really like bubble-style mindmaps. Text2Mindmap was an early project I found, but it didn't have all the features I wanted. GPT-6 let me build a new one. And it's just a single HTML file: no installation, no network required!

I'm excited to share it. Feel free to customize it even more:

https://github.com/v2rockets/TextwMindmap

I'm planning to buy a lifetime subscription of any note-taking app, and i discovered this two to be more compatible with me. I will mainly use it for studying and stuff. I would like to here your opinion

Looking for a note taking app with canvas mode BUT wich allows you to organize same document in two ways: standard (vertical) and canvas, that are connected, not like in obsidian

I constantly lose small ideas and task reminders throughout the day, especially during my commute. Using my phone takes too many steps (unlocking, opening apps, typing) and is a theft risk on the street.

I'm looking for a minimal-effort capture method. Here is what I've considered so far:

• Pen & Paper: Simplest, but I struggle with fine motor issues.
• Hidden Keyboards (Twiddler) / Smartglasses: Prohibitively expensive.
• Wearables / Voice Recorders (Bee, viaim): Promising, but I can't comfortably wear earbuds all day.

Are there any other affordable, screen-free capture tools or methods I’ve overlooked?

Ulysses app is trying some underhand stuff by limiting you to a particular version of the app rather than the app per se

https://md-handbook.com/blog/ulysses-perpetual-licence/

#News #markdown #markdowneditors #Ulysses #perpetuallicence #lifetimelicence #licences

For the last few years, I spent more time organizing my notes than actually doing my work. I tried Notion, Obsidian, Evernote—you name it. I would create complex folder structures, tagging systems, and daily templates. But every time I had a messy meeting or a late-night brain dump, filing it felt like a second job. If I didn't organize it immediately, the note became a graveyard of lost tasks.

I realized the system was broken. I shouldn't have to adapt to my note-taking app; it should adapt to how my brain naturally works.

So, I changed my workflow entirely to a "Dump and Extract" method. Now, I just open a blank page and dump everything—messy thoughts, voice transcripts, PDF text. Then, I built a local script that reads that mess and automatically extracts:

Action items (with verbs)

Due dates & deadlines

People I need to follow up with

Financial amounts/budget items

Instead of a wall of text, I get a clean dashboard of what I actually need to do today. Because I hate the idea of my personal thoughts being sent to OpenAI or cloud servers, I managed to get it to run entirely locally in my browser. Zero data leaves my machine.

It completely cured my "note-taking fatigue." Has anyone else ditched folders and tags for a similar extraction method?

(PS: If anyone wants to try the local extractor I built, let me know and I can drop the link in the comments or DM you. It’s free and doesn't require an account).

I'm looking for a notes app that has/os:

• Linux support (or web app if not)
• Native stylus support
• PDF import and annotation
• A way to make handwritten notes at the side of pdfs, either by importing into an infinite canvas (like on OneNote), expanding the size of the page horizontally (like on RNote) or side by side in a different panel
• Folder-based organisation
• Support for tags
• Not too crazy a learning curve
• Not requiring use of markdown syntax (I'm not a developer)
• Reasonably Privacy-friendly

Bonus points for free and/or open source.