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Jan 23, 2011

Asus Eee Note EA-800 - Notebooks Application


Notebooks

There's a lot I could write on this one... but I'll use images to write less. :-)  You might have difficulties watching the video... unless you download it and view it at it's full 1080p quality.  Click the images below to view full size pictures.

The Index Page


This is how it looks like when you have several notebooks made

 Sort by Tags

Once you click on the Tags button you can view tags and the number of notebooks within those tags.
This is one neat feature because it will make it easier to find things by "category".

Create New Notebook Button

 The icons display a small thumbnail of the first page.  You can see the "2" there and that means there are two Pages inside that Notebook.  Tags are also shown right next to the Notebook (ie, "Personal", "To Do", etc).

Date (year, month, day) and Time that the Notebook was last edited.  Icon to the right gives you some options.



Notebook options include:
Lock (It doesn't seem to work)
Move To - I assume it's SD Card (I have not tried it)
Rename Notebook
Move to Trash Bin
Sent To Evernote (it only goes one way...)




Soft Buttons at Index Page

These are the Mandarin ones and the perform:
Back, Apps Index, Recent, Snapshot, Sort


Notebook Pages

Page buttons

Notebook Name Button

After you click the Name Button you can write the Name of your Notebook.

 The virtual keyboard

Numbers and symbols

 Don't know what this is... but looks like the the Mandarin stuff

This version doesn't recognize English characters... It looks like it gives you suggestions based on what you write.




Page Index Button


This is how you can scroll through pages or view thumbnails of each page.

 Scroll allows you to go through pages easily (it's the same with books)

Using the Thumbnail feature allows you to view each page as a thumbnail (up to 6 at a time)

Send To Button ??

I haven't tried this... and I bet you need one of those micro sd cards to get it working.




Tags Button

 This is how you add Tags to your Notebooks.  (It does not tag individual pages)

Add as many Tags as you want


Insert image Button

You can insert an existing image from your Album/Gallery or Take an new Image with the camera

 After you select your image from the Album you are given some options

Crop your Image

 Rotate Image Buttons

Zoom "-" makes the image smaller within the canvas

 Zoom "+" makes the image bigger within the canvas

If you mess things up you can "reset"

 This is the OK or Add button.  The last button takes you back to the Album/Gallery so you can pick a different image or cancel.

Once the image is added you can move it around. 

The Left button adds the image to your Page, can you guess what the right one does?



Undo and Redo Buttons

To activate the "redo button" you must first Undo!  It comes in handy when you mess up.

Ink Shade Button

Your color pallet includes different shades of gray which are light, medium and strong.




Erase Button

Small, medium, and big eraser.  If you have the two button stylus or stylus with eraser then you don't have to tap this button all the time.  If you love making notes... and are not perfect like I am (right...) you will be using the Eraser button.

Pen Button

These are your note taking tools:
Pencil, Pen, Marker, Pressure Sensitive, Highlighter




Delete Page Button

Did you make a mess and you want to delete an entire Page?  yes you can.

Page Layout Button

If you don't like the default ruled layout... change it!

 There's 42 Page Layouts included with the Eee Note

All kinds of layouts...

 There's blank ones too so you can sketch without using lines.
If you use a layout with lines (as an aid) you can change the layout once you are done (it won't remove your notes/sketches)

If they have text... it won't be in English.  I hope the English firmware fixes this.  I wish you could create your own layouts and then add them.




New Page Button

You can add as many Pages to your Notebook as you want.  If you add a New Page it will add the Layout automatically.  Kind of neat.

Soft Buttons Inside Notebooks

A - Previous Page
B - Goes back to Notebooks Index
C - Goes back to Applications Index (home)
D - "Saves" - I don't use it...
E - Takes a Snapshot of your current drawing
F - Empy
G - Next Page




Some Notes

This is one of the longest posts... mainly because it's one of the main applications of the Eee Note. The next one will be the Reader Application.  Jeez... my Sunday flew by really fast.

All your notes will be saved .GIF format.  You can view the quality on the samples.  If you want your hand written notes converted to text you will need some kind of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) softwareNotes are saved at 768x888 pixels.

If you guys ever feel compelled to please buy through my Amazon links.  Those small commissions help pay expenses such as domain names, the Eee Note, electricity, rice and beans, and $640 I had to spend getting new tires for my car.  Life ain't cheap.  ;-)

I'm not sure when I will make the post about the Reader Application... creating content takes time.  But I hope this helps some of you looking for information about the Asus Eee Note.  ;-)

Amazon - Fujitsu Lifebook Digitizer
Amazon - OCR Software



Sample Notes

Different writing using pens and shades

Again.. there's tons of layouts you can choose from.

My Fitness Notebook (Improvements thanks to The 4-Hour Body)

This is just an example of how I use the Eee Note to track a task.

Some goals,  rules (short description), Logs to be updated daily on first page

Creating details.  You could be far more elaborate an artistic, but this works just fine.

The Title of the Page written with the Marker.  This makes it way easier to view the page title when using Thumbnail view.

Trying to achieve perfect scores for a Marine Corps PFT (Personal Fitness Test) and a CFT (Combat Fitness Test).


24 comments:

  1. Hi Jesse, where did you buy the device? Thanks for the review. Regards, Martin

    ReplyDelete
  2. Martin,

    I got it through a Taiwan online store. Links at:
    http://www.jessebandersen.com/2011/01/where-to-find-asus-eee-note-ea-800.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you! Now I have to start my search for an english rom :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. If you find it please let me know. I want it too!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dim,
    I just ordered an eee note chinese version from Taiwan but I am kind of scared if I would be able to use it to read pdfs because I read a lot of scientific articles and that is one of the reasons why I ordered it apart from talking notes. Can you please help me with this?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Some PDFs work fine with the Eee Note. Some do not fit the screen well so you must zoom in and pan around. There are tools to resize PDFs, but I'm not sure how well the conversion is.

    Check:
    http://lifehacker.com/5744954/briss-trims-pdfs-to-make-them-more-readable-on-your-e+reader

    ReplyDelete
  7. thanks for the video Jesse, when do you think you can post a video about pdf reader?
    I'm struggling with impatient, this month asus program to launch (i hope) ea800 in Italy and I'm thinking of buy one; but i need to understand the pdf potentiality and the display angle of visibility compare to an e-ink.

    ReplyDelete
  8. UomoNero,

    I'm not sure when I can make a video about the Reader app. It really does depend on my mood. If I'm in a good mood I can do a lot. I'm I'm in a terrible mood then I can't do anything. (My brain plays games with me). ;-)

    Right now I'm uploading a video about enabling the English version on the Taiwan (Mandarin) versions. Using English menus is going to allow me to understand what the Eee Note can do better.

    ReplyDelete
  9. no prob Jesse, if you can I like to watch, take your time. Intelligence is the problem and the solution of all evil.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Now that I know how to change the language, I ordered mine today at PChome - thank you for sharing all your eee note related knowledge!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Jesse, I really like your blog and videos. Thanks for your effort. I am a big fan of tablet, ebook and enote and totally agree with your opinion about ebooks. I have thinkpad x61t sxga+ and x200t. I love x61t the most because of it's amazing screen.

    I am very interested in ASUS enote. I plan to use it as draft papers to write equations (I am a engineer). How is the writing experience of asus enote? I am very satisfied with the writing experience of thinkpad tablets. Does the asus enote has the same writing quality(response speed, fluent, and precision)? From your note example it seems letters are not so smooth and precise. I really hope to see a detail review about the writing experience of this product. Thanks!!

    ReplyDelete
  12. The tablet pc with the right programs will give you plenty of speed. The Asus Eee Note might not be there yet. The application load time is one of my biggest complaints.

    Once you are in the Notebooks application the Eee Note is plenty fast at handwriting, it isn't as fast for erasing. If you want to record a voice memo and write and erase notes at the same time you won't have a pleasant experience. (I think I made an example on the Voice Memo post)

    Your handwritten notes will be a bit blocky because they are written in .gif format. My handwriting isn't super beautiful, so it's not too far from the "real" pen and paper version.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thanks for your quick reply. I didn't hope this device can be as fast as tablet. My application is only to write equations without saving them (as draft paper). All other application will be useless for me. So my only concern is that if the word looks as well as writing on a tablet.

    Is "Your handwritten notes will be a bit blocky because they are written in .gif format" after saving? or words will be blocky even during writing?

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  14. Sean,

    The notes are saved as .gif files in your Eee Note. They are not blocky as in "super pixelated", but they are not as smooth as a real pen or pencil drawings on paper. In a way similar to when you convert an analog source to digital. Turning that analog source to 0s and 1s makes them blocky unless they are in a big resolution. It's like 480x600 video looking fine on analog TVs, but in digital TVs it looks blocky because now it needs to be "upscaled" to fit the screen. Another way of explaining upscaling could be the zooming in on pictures with your computer. If the picture has low resolution and you zoom in, then it looks pixelated. The reverse or zooming out makes them look smoother (downscaling).

    I have a few image samples above which you can click and view their full size. On my computer monitor the width of those images are about 9 inches, on the Eee Note they are about 4 1/2 inches wide. This means that it looks smoother on the Eee Note because it's "downscaled" from the full resolution. So your handwriting looks good enough.

    Is it smooth for most hand writing situations? yes. For an artist that needs super precise small details... probably not. I would use the Eee Note for note taking, and rough sketching.

    I hope I explained... and hope that didn't confuse more. hahaha :)

    ReplyDelete
  15. I can understand what you are talking about.

    About the blocky effect. Some people on the internet said it is because this machine save the notes as raster images rather than vector graphics (tablet pc). For my application, I will skip this machine. Thanks for your information.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Sean,

    Yes. Vector graphics would be better. That way we could resize notes and sketches. Maybe we'll see a firmware update, or version 2.0 with vector graphics. Even better, the system is open source so someone could develop the application.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Great details. Thanks. So basically there's no anti-aliasing going on. Coming from using a tablet pc this seems like a handicap having to look at such blocky rendering.

    ReplyDelete
  18. The Eee Note won't be great for those seeking super details. It's a digital note taking system + eReader.

    The pros about the system are the screen (not backlit) and the long battery life. Battery life is my biggest complaint about the Tablet PCs.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Did you ever get the music player to work? I have tried many times with no luck

    ReplyDelete
  20. The music player worked... to a certain extent. I could never get it to fast forward or rewind.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Hello,

    Great review. Do you know if it is possible to sync with outlook calender?
    Thanks
    Emre

    ReplyDelete
  22. Emre,

    No outlook calendar synchronization.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Hi,
    do you know if Asus solved the blocky effect and alignment problems with their recent updates?

    Thanks
    Emre

    ReplyDelete
  24. Emre,
    I doubt they fixed the blocky effect stuff. But I don't have the Eee Note anymore so I cannot verify.

    ReplyDelete