How to take notes electronically

[whyrightmeow]

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Hi everyone! I was wondering if anyone had a suggestion for taking notes electronically. Most of my classes are PowerPoint or PDF format. For the PowerPoints, I know notes can be taken right in the program, but for PDFs that is not a possibility. I like my notes and the professors notes to be combined, so I usually end up printing a TON of PDFs so I can write on them directly. Does anyone have a better method? 😕

 

[tiddlywinks]

Do you use a PC or a mac? With the macs, it is actually possible to annotate PDFs - either using Preview (you can add notes on the slide, highlight, circles) or Skim, which is a free download, and even better- you can create customized notes on the PDF anywhere, underline, highlight, draw arrows, circles etc. Plus all your notes that you add are searchable, which is cool. I actually prefer that to taking notes on powerpoint and so i usually convert my powerpoints to PDFs.
If you're using a PC, i'm sure there are equivalent programs, i'm just not personally familiar with them - i've heard of ones like PDF Annotator - but I think it costs $$ - or maybe Foxit Reader? http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

 

[whyrightmeow]

I do have a PC, but I might need a new notebook soon and I think I will get a Mac. I'm scared to switch but everyone I know loves their Macs... Thanks though, I will look into those programs!

 

[Starwrecker]

If you have Microsoft OneNote you can import your PDFs into there and take your notes electronically there. Took me a while to get used to it, but its a handy little program. Now if I was only smart enough to reorganize my notes a little better....

 

[Whirr]

There are pros and cons with Macs, of course, but by and large I love mine. I grew up with them, though. Keep in mind on the newer ones, you can run Windows if you want to, too.