BlueBeam Revu

You'll have to forgive me for dropping off the face of the earth over the Summer. I had been too busy to post or even really read up on much of the trends in the tablet pc world. My two favorite spots have seemed to have trouble, namely the tabletpcbuzz. The Studenttabletpc site also is experiencing a bit of errors on almost every page I go to. GottaBeMobile.com seems to be filling in the shoes to an extent. They've got a marvelous looking site and recently added a forum. I love watching the inkshows to get tidbits of information I lack.

One piece of software that I've tested was the BlueBeam Revu pdf mark-up software. I thought it was excellent. It marks up PDFs just like you'd expect PDF Annotator to do, but it seems a bit more user friendly to me. This with the options to add comment pictures (Vector, how cool!) to your documents is a big bonus when it comes down to flagging for future studying time or special annotations. It is adding some of the functions that I enjoy in OneNote to it.
I have been corresponding with a salesperson via e-mail about the software. I've learned some great tidbits as well from her.

First, there's student discounts of course. Most in the tablet pc world fail to realize just how important this is to some of us. I cannot afford to go drop over $200 for ANY software that just happens to be in a market that has low demand thus is a specialty item. I say to all of your anti MS users out there - if you gripe about the OS costing so much and the monopoly they have, then how can we justify some of these prices for annotators or markup tools such as Mind Manager?

After several e-mails, Ms. Haynes quoted me a price for the basic BlueBeam Revu that has all the CAD printing software stripped of it. It is basically the part that deals with MS Office package. This is going to cost $20. $20! This is much better than PDF Annotator's price, and with the look and feel of the software, it's on my #1 thing to buy this quarter.

Secondly, I've been discussing the highlighter pen with Ms. Haynes and she has informed me that they are replacing the "pen" function with a style that's more of the highlighter we expect in an annotation software. This was to be released a couple of weeks ago but I haven't checked on it yet.

Thirdly, I haven't had the trial version crash once on me. PDF Annotator had a problem with freezing up and slowing my machine down, but so far so good with Revu.

My last point is simple. I use Adobe Acrobat to scan, print, and do OCR on PDF files. Over the summer my family has been enjoying the great Northwest's parks and trails every week. We've made a point to find a new trail every weekend and go for a hike that we haven't seen yet. I logged onto a site and downloaded some PDF maps of our area and different trail heads. I saved one and tried to print with Adobe Acrobat, and I got a bunch of ink mess. It seems that Acrobat couldn't tell the difference between the grey and black areas of the PDF. I tried again with another setting and got the same result.
I loaded Revu and got the best quality PDF print I think I've ever seen (on my bubble-jet printer that is). I applaud this software and give it two (papercut-less) thumbs up!

Going... Papered?

I've started this quarter out exactly the same as I started last year's - with a backpack full of books, pens and a batch of paper. Not only is this heavy while I walk to class, but quite awkward as I go from my slate to paper.
I actually have to print power points and write on the side which is making me wish I could reach for that "add more space" button quite often.

There is another side of going non-paperless that I enjoy and that's the books. I actually like having the book there open where I can look at it and work on my homework or study for a quiz more than flipping through open windows with a stylus, going back and forth and losing my place.
I also like not having to worry about finding a plug in source for power between classes to make sure I can finish the lecture without my computer shutting down on me. I mistakenly purchased a long life battery as my 2nd choice which will not fit in the Fujitsu leather portfolio case.
This week I'll be scanning my notes and preparing for my Fujitsu to return to its home - in my classrooms.

Ouch!

Well, after enjoying my summer and spending as much time as I could with my family, school's returned in full swing and I neglected to get my tablet fixed over the summer.
While the problem with the screen peeling up is minor, I also had some issues with the computer itself. I get errors on shutdown either from digitizor being unable to write at some address or the screen all of a sudden turning green, blue or black without the cursor.
Shipping it to Fujitsu was expensive. My feelings told me I shouldn't have insured the unit, since I'm really insuring UPS instead of myself, but I figured 50$ would be better than being suck with a broken or stolen unit.
After owning the machine for almost a year, I can say that I've been mostly happy with it.
I still wish it had a more powerful video processor inside and was a bit faster.