Looking for a cheap laptop for note-taking in college

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xomm

xomm

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I'm heading to college next year, and I figure I should probably have a laptop on hand to take notes or work outside of the dorm.

I do plan on bringing my custom rig to college and will be doing all my gaming and workstation tasks on that, so I'm not looking for a particularly powerful laptop. An i3 with an iGPU is perfectly fine (and preferable, to keep costs down).

I don't have any particular budget restrictions, but I would like to keep prices as low as possible without sacrificing build quality. I currently have my eye on this ASUS laptop (surprisingly, a Best Buy item without an absurd price tag).

Can anyone tell me if this is a good deal? Looked like the best deal I could find scouring Slickdeals, apart from the ~$350 refurbished Lenovos that seem to run out of stock literally the day they're posted.
 
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DarkSable

DarkSable

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I'd also consider buying a netbook and then sticking an SSD in it. It's what I did, and for tasks such as notetaking, it works better than a laptop with a more powerful CPU but a slow hard drive. (That being said, that's a surprisingly good deal for that laptop - but I would again recommend putting a SSD in it.)
 
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xomm

xomm

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That's what I figured as well. Considering this laptop is selling for barely more than a netbook, I'm probably going to take the deal and put a 120GB SSD in it.
 
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royalcrown

royalcrown

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If you are looking for a device to take notes, a table makes more sense IMO.

Lighter, more portable, easier to fit in your bag.
Apps specifically for taking notes and handwriting recognition, conversion to text. Can be used with a stylus, many apps allow writing drawing on the same page.
Much better battery life then a laptop. will last you all day.

For instance, take a look at this ipad app:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/notability-take-notes-annotate/id360593530?mt=8

You can even print from ipad using an adapter, or your printer https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/notability-take-notes-annotate/id360593530?mt=8 your pc you are bringing with. Ipad is also getting MS office and can use Google docs. IDK but android tablets may have similar apps too.
 
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DarkSable

DarkSable

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This must be one impressive table, if it's lightweight and easy to fit into your bag. :p

That being said, the point about being able to draw on the tablet is pretty good; I personally use a combination of my laptop for english and philosophy classes and paper for math and science classes - even with a tablet, I'd be prone to do so, just because you have more control with pen and paper. (And no matter what anyone says, typing on a computer will always be much, much faster than on a tablet.)
 
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royalcrown

royalcrown

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Yeah, it's a really small table, hard part is the chairs and the candlesticks :p

IDK, I have a bluetooth KB for my ipad. It types just as fast as a laptop.

I was actually using my ipad for my comp, after I sold my imac and while ordering this comp.

Recording the lecture while you are taking notes/drawing and then having it converted to text will be even faster. Another cool thing that app can do is link anything you draw or write to the recording,so if you write or draw something at a specific point during the lecture then later tap it, it will play the audio that was recording at that particular time.
 
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xomm

xomm

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I would get an iPad if I didn't already have an Asus Transformer Prime w/ keyboard dock. As much as I love it, I have yet to find a office or note app that I can get comfortable with, and multitasking isn't great (10 inches ain't much, and obviously lacks any sort of window system.)
 
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