chromebook Chromebook for university. What apps?

[FrenchChef]

Hello LTT community!

Finally getting myself a Chromebook (Lenovo 500e for those who would ask). 

Since my CB is a 2-in-1 with EMR wacom stylus, I want to take full advantage of it and ditch paper notes.

But as a student, I am naturally greedy and seek the best, free (or one time payment only but cheap, no subscription) applications for everything I could need: note taking, quotes, formulas (economy), even photo editing and simple vector design in addition to other neat applications for school. Apps compatible with EMR stylus are a plus!

[Slottr]

Oh god why a chromebook

 

You could probably check with your university to see if you have any benefits from being a student. 

eg. I get the entire Office Suite for free, and have a significant discount on the Adobe CC suite by just being a student of any college on campus

 

[FrenchChef]

2 minutes ago, Slottr said:

Oh god why a chromebook

1

Didn't have the money for a Surface and wanted a convertible to scribble notes on PDFs and all. Also because of battery and performance for the price. I will make myself a desktop in winter to game and heavy editing (for now I still have a laptop running windows to do that)

[kokakolia]

If I were in your shoes, I’d get a cheap refurb business laptop with Windows and get the Microsoft Office suite for free through the University. The battery life won’t be great however. Expect ~2 hours. 

 

But you can always buy a new laptop as well. It will likely be a flimsy plastic unit with an awful screen and tinny speakers but it will get the job done. And battery life should easily reach 5 hours.

[FrenchChef]

6 minutes ago, kokakolia said:

If I were in your shoes, I’d get a cheap refurb business laptop with Windows and get the Microsoft Office suite for free through the University. The battery life won’t be great however. Expect ~2 hours. 

 

But you can always buy a new laptop as well. It will likely be a flimsy plastic unit with an awful screen and tinny speakers but it will get the job done. And battery life should easily reach 5 hours.

Yeah nah, I need big battery and scribbling on things. I tried to get a surface pro for cheap but couldn't get it where I am

[kokakolia]

6 minutes ago, FrenchChef said:

Yeah nah, I need big battery and scribbling on things. I tried to get a surface pro for cheap but couldn't get it where I am

From my experience it’s better to write things down on paper. You can more easily draw tables and sketches that way as well. Computers are immensely distracting on the other hand. Because the internet. And typing is very restrictive, it makes science courses with formulas a nightmare to write down. 

[FrenchChef]

8 minutes ago, kokakolia said:

From my experience it’s better to write things down on paper. You can more easily draw tables and sketches that way as well. Computers are immensely distracting on the other hand. Because the internet. And typing is very restrictive, it makes science courses with formulas a nightmare to write down. 

I respect your opinion. It's true it can be a big distraction to be on the computer, but since I was able to, I always took my notes on computers (through Xmind and Imindmaps mainly). I just want the best apps, struggle free or find my own "ecosystem" of apps to efficiently take notes  
One thing that was hard for me were PDFs and Formulas. On how to incorporate/annotate them in my mind maps. Lately, I spent some time studying the flow system notetaking (which can incorporate mind maps!), that's why vector drawing could be nice.

[kokakolia]

22 minutes ago, FrenchChef said:

I respect your opinion. It's true it can be a big distraction to be on the computer, but since I was able to, I always took my notes on computers (through Xmind and Imindmaps mainly). I just want the best apps, struggle free or find my own "ecosystem" of apps to efficiently take notes  
One thing that was hard for me were PDFs and Formulas. On how to incorporate/annotate them in my mind maps. Lately, I spent some time studying the flow system notetaking (which can incorporate mind maps!), that's why vector drawing could be nice.

Having digital copies of your notes must be nice. I always lost my notes, or had them super disorganized into one fat notebook. 

 

I see what you’re doing and it seems like bees knees the way you describe it. Just keep it up.

[FrenchChef]

6 minutes ago, kokakolia said:

Having digital copies of your notes must be nice. I always lost my notes, or had them super disorganized into one fat notebook. 

 

I see what you’re doing and it seems like bees knees the way you describe it. Just keep it up.

Yes! My handwriting is bad and I never was able to keep a consistent color code for my notes when I was on regular paper... that I managed to lost my things.

One big plus for digitalization is going in a document and CTRL + F the things you need to then make your unit summaries. A problem I had on paper was trying to find that ONE formula hidden at the beginning of the notebook or on a paper I separated temporarily but never put back in my file.