Note taking PDF's on MacBook Pro

[midweststudent1]

Our school gives us our power points before class so that we can take notes on them during lectures...most people use iAnnotate or Notability on their iPads, but I don't like taking notes on the iPad. I was planning on using my MacBook Pro.....Does anyone have suggestions on which software to use to annotate PDFs well?

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[SBR249]

Adobe reader should have functions that let you draw textboxes and sticky notes on PDF. A lot of freeware that can open PDFs also have annotate functions. Otherwise, if you have some cash and want to get fancy, one of my friends bought a USB graphic tablet with stylus (you can find those for around $50) and took notes directly with that. He had a wacom and it looked pretty cool but I've seen cheaper tablets that start at around $20-30 on monoprice though some of them don't work with OSX.

 

[MrDoctorman]

Throughout undergrad, I used Preview. Go to Tools -> Annotate -> Add Text/Add Note. For drawings, I just used a physical notebook. I expect it will work in med school too.

 

[midweststudent1]

I was particularly trying to find a program where I could easily add in pictures or charts to the PDF, this is what I hear is so useful for the iPad. Is something available for macbook?

 

[Lya]

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/using-electronic-notes.1087302/

I just tried using Onenote on my macbook. It was personally more intuitive and cleaner to use than Evernote, and perhaps you might enjoy using it too. You can "download" PDFs into Onenote, annotate wherever you want, and add pictures/charts.

 

[SBR249]

An alternative is to convert PDFs into powerpoint slides. Boxoft is a nice freeware program that lets you do that and even has batch mode. The downside is that sometimes formatting gets screwed up in the conversion, etc. And Onenote as mentioned above is also good for annotation as well.

 

[Sea Otter]

I vote for Onenote. You can import your powerpoints into the program as PDFs and then annotate on them. The notebook set-up of the program makes it very easy to keep things organized since you can have multiple notebooks for different subjects/blocks/however your school organizes things.

 

[Kahreek]

there are pdf readers, i think adobe lets you do that.

Like open text boxes over the pdf and type.

 

[redblue]

I personally like to use Skim, you can add in images and charts along with your own notes etc.

 

[trishaaah]

I second OneNote! Used it for all my note taking throughout undergrad and am planning on using it on my new MacBook through my post-bacc and med school. I had super illustration-heavy PDFs for gross anatomy which I imported and was able to annotate as well as make drawings which was 100% necessary for gross.