Think of the pen like say a usb steering wheel. Unless you play racing games, you'#re not going to use the steering wheel. Unless you take notes etc, then there is no reason to use the pen. at university my pen is used day in day out, the moment i get home, the pen is not touched. Mine will be sat in my bag until the end of september now.
I have not used the pen yet
- Thread starter bulls96
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ctitanic
Well-Known Member
No exactly. I'm using the pen instead of the keyboard. Right now I'm posting this using the pen.
ScottyS
Active Member
Me too, except I not only use the pen to take notes (mostly using on-screen keyboard to convert handwriting to text), I teach in small groups and use OneNote as a whiteboard to draw diagrams and graphs. I use it like scrap paper. I also sometimes use the pen like a mouse when using in desktop mode but holding it as a tablet.
But at home my Surface becomes my desktop PC, plugged into a 27" monitor and USB hub with wireless keyboard and mouse.
Your usage case seems to be very much a minority. I could not personally think of a more cumbersome way of entering text. Handwriting recognition (for me) is far to non-existent for it to be in any way efficient. I occasionally use it to enter a search term into google, but that i as far as it goes. Much easier for me to type full speed in qwerty with the onscreen keyboard.
ScottyS
Active Member
I wonder if its a generational thing.
In high school we took typing class. We learned to set the margins and tabs and what the difference between line space and carriage return was. But we never really learned to type because that would have required practice and we were going to college and were going to get good jobs were we'd have secretaries to type for us.
In college we had to type term papers. I bought a small portable manual typewriter and hunted and pecked the papers out. It took days. If you made a mistake too large to fix with White Out™, you'd have to retype the whole page.
For many years at work I wrote by hand (and my profession owns the reputation for having the worst handwriting) but now we now use an electronic medical record (EMR) and I have to type. But it's better than the old college days. Thank God for copy-and-paste, spell-check and an auto-type feature that lets me dump in pre-typed text.
Maybe that's why I feel its nice to hold a pen in hand and jot down notes and diagrams.
In high school we took typing class. We learned to set the margins and tabs and what the difference between line space and carriage return was. But we never really learned to type because that would have required practice and we were going to college and were going to get good jobs were we'd have secretaries to type for us.
In college we had to type term papers. I bought a small portable manual typewriter and hunted and pecked the papers out. It took days. If you made a mistake too large to fix with White Out™, you'd have to retype the whole page.
For many years at work I wrote by hand (and my profession owns the reputation for having the worst handwriting) but now we now use an electronic medical record (EMR) and I have to type. But it's better than the old college days. Thank God for copy-and-paste, spell-check and an auto-type feature that lets me dump in pre-typed text.
Maybe that's why I feel its nice to hold a pen in hand and jot down notes and diagrams.
hmm. I'm only 26, a youngun, but university is the first time i've ever had the option of typing out assignments. Prior to this, absolutely everything was hand written. The concept of a computer in the classroom at school was a mind****. I bought a dell laptop when i was about 16 for school, and it became nothing more than a game and media device. It had absolutely no place in the classroom. even today though, while i have to type my assignments, all exams are pen and paper, so thankfully i've had a year of digital note taking to keep my handwriting in check. Other class mates really struggled as they havn't written more than a shopping list in the past 1-2 years.
I love doing anything with my hands, why being a fish monger and butcher was my favourite job to date, as such i also just love writing. but if i need to bash out a paragraph, it makes little sense for me to spend 5 times the time writing it out on the surface instead of just typing it out in a minute or two.
TunaSurface
Active Member
I use the pen almost everyday, because I draw.
Otherwise no I never use it.
Otherwise no I never use it.
I don't think ctitanic's case is that unusual, granted I tend to do it more often with my 8" devices simply because it is easier to hold. I do agree that typing on a keyboard is faster and that is exactly why I sometimes choose the pen. Faster isn't always better or even more efficient, sometimes you need to put some thought into your writing and using a pen slows down the process so you focus on thinking. There is a reason that a lot of authors still use pen and notebooks.
ScottyS
Active Member
I'm the opposite, 62. We got a computer when I was in high school, well it was really a teletype machine that would connect to a computer at a college 50 miles away. Because computer time was so valuable we would type out programs in BASIC (the real geeks learned FORTRAN) and when it was de-bugged and clean it'd be transformed into holes in yellow greasy paper tape and be run through a reader which we connected to that computer 50 miles away dialing up with a rotary dial phone.
I wish I could draw. I carry the pen and have Fresh Paint, just in case.
TunaSurface
Active Member
Everyone can draw. And when I said that I draw I did not mean that I draw good. Also I prefer Microsoft paint so much over Fresh Paint. MS.Paint is so much simpler and more user- friendly.
