Ipad Air and PDF editing using a pen

A

Andyk5

[H]ard|Gawd
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I have sold my Lenovo thinkpad tablet 2 a couple months ago but now I miss it a lot because I am taking a class which requires me to download 25-30 pages of homework (digital circuits, block diagrams, code) do the homework using a pencil, erase more than I actually end up writing and in the end my timing diagrams don't look that great, I have all this eraser junk everywhere, I have to take the pages that pertain the homework, then scan them and then upload them. I think with my Lenovo tablet this would have been much easier but then I did not like the Atom CPU and the 2 gig ram limitation on the Lenovo. It is just not feasible for an all out operating system like Win8.

Anyways, I have been thinking about the picking up the new Ipad Air. How is the PDF editing software and pen capability for it? I am aware that palm rejection is finicky and requires the software to provide a rejection are for your palm to sit on and everything.

In the end, what I am looking for is being able to read and edit 20-30 page pdf files and watch medium resolution lectures from my dropbox, which I think the Ipad Air can do better than the thinkpad tablet 2. I also want a very responsive pen input, which Lenovo provides using a Wacom digitizer but I am not sure how the Ipad is. I saw some youtube videos and people were saying things like
"oh look at this, it is great" while drawing a line and I can clearly see that the application takes .2 seconds or so to update the screen. I am positive that this is not Ipad's fault since the A7 CPU is probably just as fast, if not faster than the Atom that I used to use, with much less overhead than Win8 so it must be the crappy applications that limits the functionality.
 
The ipad has no digitizer. At least last I knew. Which is exactly why I am looking at getting a used surface pro to take notes with.
 
voklskier4452 said:
The ipad has no digitizer. At least last I knew. Which is exactly why I am looking at getting a used surface pro to take notes with.
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Yes I do know that, but there are ways you can take notes on an ipad, mostly application driven and using capactive pens. The biggest issue is not being able to rest your palm on the screen which some apps address.
My biggest issue is being able to edit a pdf file fluently. Most tablets can take notes on a blank page fairly well, capactive or digitizer, the issue starts when you are editing pdf's and you feel like you are writing with a pen that is going out of ink, even with wacom digitized tablets.

I did have the SurfacePro and Surface Pro2 and they were both the only tablets I owned that could do what I am looking to do smoothly. The problem is they are, heavy, cumbersome, thick, they got hot and noisy due to the fan and get 3-4 hours of real life battery usage, as well as $1300 or so new. So it is pretty much a deal breaker. At that price range I can wait and get myself the new MacBook air retina and just write on pdf files after I print them on a piece of paper :)
 
There are Bluetooth pens for the iPad that handle palm rejection. My guess is that the Asus Vivotab Note coming the next couple of months with a Wacom digitizer would be right up your alley. The performance of these new Bay Trail Atom devices is much superior to the old Clover Trails as in the ThinkPad Tablet 2. I use a modern app called Drawboard PDF and on my Dell Venue 8 Pro, even with very large PDF files, 1000+ pages, the inking experience is very smooth and the performance solid.
 
I am in the same boat as you but with an ipad 3 so if you find a good solution I would love to see it. All my classes are giving out notes in pdf form and the professors lecture in one note displayed off a projector.

The price of the surface pro is a killer so hopefully someone has a better idea than me!
 
I saw a prof try to do this live on a projection screen....the pinnacle of painful lag. Took literally 5+ seconds for input to display.
 
heatlesssun said:
There are Bluetooth pens for the iPad that handle palm rejection. My guess is that the Asus Vivotab Note coming the next couple of months with a Wacom digitizer would be right up your alley. The performance of these new Bay Trail Atom devices is much superior to the old Clover Trails as in the ThinkPad Tablet 2. I use a modern app called Drawboard PDF and on my Dell Venue 8 Pro, even with very large PDF files, 1000+ pages, the inking experience is very smooth and the performance solid.
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For that matter, I would love to have a Bay Trail ThinkPad tablet actually but I guess Lenovo will put a release date for a Bay Trail Thinkpad Tablet in the first quarter of 2015 and then delay to third quarter of 2015.... being about two generations of processors behind....

I have no idea how those guys actually stay in the business with all the quality issues and constantly "missing the boat" on the newest and the greatest chips and stuff....
 
Andyk5 said:
I have no idea how those guys actually stay in the business with all the quality issues and constantly "missing the boat" on the newest and the greatest chips and stuff....
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Lenovo is on it's second 8" Bay Trail tablet, though for some reason they decided not to put a pen digitizer in either of them which seem odd.
 
heatlesssun said:
Lenovo is on it's second 8" Bay Trail tablet, though for some reason they decided not to put a pen digitizer in either of them which seem odd.
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Deinos said:
Thinkpad 8 BayTrail already exists; unfortunately, they have removed wacom support from it :(
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So moral of the story is Thinkpad Tablet 2 with Baytrail orrrrr Helix with Haswell is not coming to town until Intel refreshes the CPU's a couple more time, just to make sure you are about a year behind on technology.

On a desktop it does not matter, an Ivy bridge is just as good as Haswell and who cares about %7 performance increase.

On a laptop it makes a huge difference because of cooling

On a tablet it makes even more of a difference because of battery life

On an Atom tablet, it is basically life or death situation since Clover Trail to bay trail upgrade seems like it will fix every issue that TP2 had, hence having issues playing video 480p and above, storage being so slow and ram being so limited and CPU being overrun by a full operating system, crippling the whole thing. Bay trail has anywhere between 2-3 times the performance of clover trail, which would make TP2 what it was supposed to be in the first place.

But as I said earlier, since it is a critical hardware update which would make the product actually work, just like critical drivers and Bios updates, Lenovo will not provide them, until it is too late.
 
Go for a surface RT or surface Pro, much better suited for this.

Using a Pen on an iPad is so kludgy. Any sort of detailed writing or drawing is painful. You can make big sweeping lines like with your fingers and that is it. Trust me, I have a bunch of co-workers that try to use them as note taking devices and all they can do are big blocky letters.
 
there are a few pdf apps for this, we use a few at the office for signing/stamping drawings

bluebeam is pretty good, there are others with less features like sign easy, pdf expert etc, never tried with a pen however
 
I don't like using a capacitive pen on my iPad. You should reconsider a Windows 8 device if you want to use a pen, since they generally have the best combination of hardware and software to make good use of the pen. Reconsider your dismissal of the new Atom CPUs. They are an incredible boost over the previous generation of Atoms and perform comparably to a Sandy Bridge i3. More than enough to do a great job at Windows 8 and whatever software you want to take notes in. My Dell Venue 8 Pro even handles Adobe Illustrator quite well.
 
CEpeep said:
I don't like using a capacitive pen on my iPad. You should reconsider a Windows 8 device if you want to use a pen, since they generally have the best combination of hardware and software to make good use of the pen. Reconsider your dismissal of the new Atom CPUs. They are an incredible boost over the previous generation of Atoms and perform comparably to a Sandy Bridge i3. More than enough to do a great job at Windows 8 and whatever software you want to take notes in. My Dell Venue 8 Pro even handles Adobe Illustrator quite well.
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I never dismissed the new bay trail atom CPU's, I actually really like them and excited about them. I think they will make ThinkPad tablet 2, what it was supposed to be in the first place. My issue is, I am a bit prejudice about Dell tablets, love Lenovo stuff ,but don't have another 8 months for them to constantly push back release and shipment dates.
This is first hand experience I had with them with new products, both Helix and TP2.

Ohhhh chinese new year happened, factory closed 2 weeks, ohhh we don't have enough materials to build more tablets like the screen.....
Bunch of BS IMO. a 10 inch 1366x768 touch screen has been more than readily available for many years now. It is not like a 4k OLED bla bla.. And if all the factories in China closed down for 2 weeks during Chinese new year holiday, the whole world would come to a stop. Lenovo customer service is horrible and they lie a lot, like every day, on the forums, over the phone, over emails..... Their product design group is special and very good, I love the products, it is just that you can never ever get your hands on them when you are supposed. If you are looking for anything except a Best Buy available model like Yoga or Idea Pad series you are in for a ride my friend cause it is going to take you forever to get the right computing device at the right time.
 
I don't know about editing PDFs, but go check out Adonit. I just bought a Jot Pro for myself an am fairly satisfied with it. My son has a Jot Touch 4 which is mainly for art, but has Bluetooth. I do not recommend the Jot Script, however. It seems to have issues, and I returned mine. No issues with the Touch 4 though... it writes very nicely in Penultimate.

Just tried Travoltas app and it seems to work well with my Jot Pro.
 
If you can swing it, surface pro or pro 2 is what you want. The built in pen and digitizer is awesome and the attachable keyboard is nice too.

I'm happy with my Surface pro.

PS. Sorry for recommending a non-apple product here in the Apple forum. I've had a 1st and 3rd gen iPad and while I really enjoyed them, they just aren't as well suited for the usage you are describing in my opinion since they don't have a Wacom or equivalent digitizer for the pen input.
 
Surface Pro 128GB Gen1 is now only $500 :eek: Compare to an iPad at $500, the Surface Pro is a no brainer.

Full laptop hardware and software, full HD resolution, and Wacom digitizer. Just get a Surface Pro. You can probably make it an hackintosh if you really want to stay in the Apple camp.
 
I agree with those who say an iPad is not really good for this application. It is not a question of horse power, but it doesn't have a digitizing screen, and for heavy duty editing of PDFs, you want that big time. Light-duty editing of PDFs is fine using apps like GoodReader or PDF Expert.

The Surface Pro and Surface Pro 2 will do the job, but IMO they are NOT tablets in the sense that they feel horrible in the hand. If you get one, plan to use it flat on a surface or propped up on something. The stand angle is not really suitable for lots of editing of PDFs.

The Surface RT or Surface 2 will not do the job because they don't have digitizing screens.

Probably the best option is one of the Samsung Android tablets that come with the digitizing screen and pen. I believe the ones with this option all have "Note" in the name. I think they recently released a 10-inch model with some crazy high dpi screen. I see student's using these all the time.
 
AQ_OC said:
I agree with those who say an iPad is not really good for this application. It is not a question of horse power, but it doesn't have a digitizing screen, and for heavy duty editing of PDFs, you want that big time. Light-duty editing of PDFs is fine using apps like GoodReader or PDF Expert.

The Surface Pro and Surface Pro 2 will do the job, but IMO they are NOT tablets in the sense that they feel horrible in the hand. If you get one, plan to use it flat on a surface or propped up on something. The stand angle is not really suitable for lots of editing of PDFs.

The Surface RT or Surface 2 will not do the job because they don't have digitizing screens.

Probably the best option is one of the Samsung Android tablets that come with the digitizing screen and pen. I believe the ones with this option all have "Note" in the name. I think they recently released a 10-inch model with some crazy high dpi screen. I see student's using these all the time.
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I have used Samsung Note devices before and they were absolutely horrifying. The cpu in those things was a dog and it did not even come with Jelly Bean at the time, allthough Jelly bean was released months prior to the release of the Note. Samsung dicked around for months saying that they will make Jelly Bean availible, not sure if it happened, I got rid of mine before that and probably will never purchase another Samsung or android based tablet.
 
While the Samsung Note devices use Wacom digitizers the ink technology in Windows overall is much more powerful though that power is mostly in desktop apps.
 
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