To be Square or not to be

I want to clear one issue, when I talked about square monitors I talk about same number of pixels on both X and Y, spread over the same distance. So let’s say I want a 2048 by 2048 pixel monitor then this would have to be around 50cm by 50cm. This would be a ratio of 1:1. What most people are considering square monitors are monitors with resolution of 1024×768 or 1280×1024, so either 4:3 or 5:4. Even my 24″ screen of 1920×1200 got a different ratio of 8:5. All these might seem pretty square compared to the “HD” monitors of 1920×1080 which is 16:9. So when people complain about not been able to find a square monitor then they often want a 4:3, 5:4 or even 8:5 but not a widescreen of 16:9.

When talking about ratio I do prefer to talk about the Ratio to One, so width divided by height. Let’s look at some of the normal monitor resolutions:

1024 by 768 pixels: 1.3333 to 1

1280 by 1024 pixels: 1.25 to 1

1920 by 1200 pixels: 1.6 to 1

1920 by 1080 pixels: 1.77 to 1

The smaller the value is the more “square” it is. Here we can see that the widescreen monitors that offers Full HD is the worst.

Other resolutions I found:

1440 by 900 pixels: 1.6 to 1 (seen on a 19″)

1366 by 768 pixels: 1.778 to 1 (seen on a 19″)

1600 by 900 pixels: 1.77 to 1 (seen on a 20″)

1680 by 1050 pixels: 1.66 to 1 (see on a 21″)

2560 by 1600 pixels: 1.6 to 1 (30″)

2560 by 1440 pixels: 1.778 to 1 (Apple LED Cinema Display 27″)

1024 by 600 pixels: 1.70 to 1 (netbook 10″)

So nothing really comes close to square. I’m no longer that shocked about the different ratios but I’m surprised about the low resolutions that people often get offered, such as 1440 by 900 pixels. Most of the widescreen monitors that are not Full HD (1080) got a really bad resolution. Try to work with Excel sheets with 768 pixels in the height, no fun really.

Problems reported by users

These issues are mainly a summary of the comments I got on my previous blog post about monitors (Thanks for those comments). Often the issues reported are either related to bad software or wrong source data.

Image been stretched on widescreen

This happens very easy, if you take a picture done with a camera that doesn’t create widescreen images, the image will then have to be stretched to fit the whole screen. Solution would be to crop the image to get a portion of the image that fits the screen, or re-size based on the height and crop the sides off. Perfect solution would always to use source images with same ratio as the display. So this is not really a widescreen issue.

Games look bad

Most games that have developed within the last few years should support widescreen by default. Even if they have to add some black bars (border) around the play-field it should work. Older games might switch the resolution to something like 800 by 600 and yes, this would look bad. I doubt this is an issue any more really!

User selects wrong resolution

When circles turns into eclipse or other such distortions then the first thing to do would be to check the resolution set under Windows (or whatever OS is been used). If the OS has been setup to run a resolution with another ratio than the display then yes, the distortions will show up in all software (AutoCad!). I just tried on my 24″ to change to 1280 by 1024 and yes, it looked very bad. Text got stretched and was hard to read.

1080 killed 1200, damn movies..

So why do we see so many 1920 by 1080 pixel monitors? The one to blame must be Blu-ray, as they set the resolution to max 1920 by 1080, this might work very good when you sit in-front of your 46″ flat LED display in the living room and is enjoying a movie but tell me, WHY do we have to go down that road with monitors? Of course, if you use your PC to watch movies, maybe even with a Blu-ray player connected as second source then MAYBE it makes sense. If you do this 10% of the time, then would you not be happy to have some black bars at the top/bottom and have more work area when you use the PC for something constructive? I never watch movies (only trailers) on my PC, so 1080 would not make sense to me really. Yet I still see this resolution becoming the norm!

My current setup

Let’s have a look at how my monitor setup have changed since I wrote about monitors. To be honest, not a hell lot have changed.

In 2007 I worked from a home office, so my work and home setup was the same:

This was (from left to right) a 17″ 1280×1024 monitor, then a 24″ with resolution of 1920×1200 but rotated 90 degrees (1200×1920) , finally my very old 15″ running 1024×768 pixels.

The main reason for the rotated monitor was not to freak people out but for editing source code, work on Word documents and excel sheets this layout is perfect. I had my 19″ as main screen in the beginning, so I was able to work with the code while watching the game run on the other monitor. This was not optimal for when I played games (Such as Lord of the Rings Online), so here I changed the main display to be the 24″ but this resulted in that I had to rotate the monitor all the time.

Too much hassle really so I ended up rotating it back to normal.

End of 2010, home monitor setup

Now I’m no longer working 100% from my home office but around 20% (Plus spare time projects). Not much have changed with my home setup really. I’m using the same old 17″ (1280×1024) to the left, then the 24″ in the center (1920×1200) and to the very right a new 17″ (1280×1024). I got the last 17″ when my ex upgraded from 17″ to 21″. I did try running with all 4 monitors, having the 15″ to the very right but that didn’t make any sense really. Too much turning the head to be able to see what was happening on that final screen. This might be an idea if I watched some online TV while sitting at the PC.

End of 2010, work monitor setup

Here we again have a 19″ (old one with bad colors, should get that upgraded soon) with 1280×1024 and a 24″ rotated by 90 degrees. At work this is perfect (it does freak people out) as I’m either working with source code or with Word documents. The setup here difference from my old home one as the main display is the 19″ monitor, so when I launch our Atlas (that I’m writing new code for) then the atlas will show up on the 19″ and I’m still able to debug/view the code on the big monitor.

The setup I would like

I would like to change my setup here at home at some stage, since I will not be able to get any square monitors (1:1, not even sure I want that anymore really) I would probably choose the new Apple 27″ Cinema Display and 1 (or 2) 24″ monitors, the 24″ should then be rotated and be on left/right side. This is not going to happen for a long time (due to costs). This would not have high priority for me anyway, as I’m pretty happy with the current setup and it suits my needs.

The future

Lot’s have happened with monitors during the last few years, quality have gone up and price have gone down. If we ignore the crazyness with 1080 then I would say things are going forward, just not fast enough. I would like to see Quad HD, so around 3980 by 2180 in the near future (these do exists as prototypes).

Curved displays

Several companies (NEC and Alienware) have demonstrated curved displays. These basically gives the resolution of 2 or 3 normal monitors but combined into one unit that curves nicely.

Ostendo have also developed a nice setup Ostendo CRVD This setup offers a 43″ curved display but only with a resolution of 2880 by 900 (but I would still like to test such a monitor), the price for this is a big issue as it currently sells for around $6500.

No bezels

I’m sure such systems already exist but probably too expensive. What I have in mind here would be 3 displays connected together, but without any bezels (border) between the displays, maybe a thin line would be visible but nothing more, please.  If the 3 displays were then connected so that the two side displays were shifted a bit towards the viewer (as I have it with my system) then this would be a possible replacement of the curved displays. Having ONE big display, behaving as one BIG display would be the perfect solution in my opinion.

Touch displays

I need to touch this subject (pun intended). We all seen it in the movies (Minority Report is a prefect example): Big semi transparent displays that is controlled by either touch or gesture. But did we ever see anyone use these setups for anything involving detailed work? Or do they ever use them for anything long term? Nope. We seen them movie images around, zoom on images and so forth (all could be done on my iPhone). Now we do have the possibility to buy touch screens that can be connected to our PCs. But do tell me: WHY?

Sure if you use the PC in a multimedia setup then it can be nice to do some operations without using the mouse. But what about normal usage of the PC? Just try to sit and read this article and each time you had to scroll down, or click a link: then you would have to life the arm, touch the screen and then back with the arm. Or if you do a lot of work with pictures, imaging 3 hours work with your arms stretched out in front of you. Welcome pain :-)

So what will happen!

I don’t know, I’m sure we will see quad HD resolutions at some stage (when there is a real need for it.. or when movies are in that resolution!). I doubt we will see bigger displays really (30″ should be enough normally). Technology will advance to give us better quality, use less power and generate less heat. Dear readers, if you have ideas for what the future will bring us in connection with visuals (maybe beyond monitors) then please leave some comments.

So it is about Xbox 360 and winning the next generation console race. EXCUSE ME but Xbox 360 is NOT next-gen and don’t get me wrong neither is PS3 or Nintendo Wii. They are CURRENT generation of consoles. Let us have a look:

Previous generation

• Nintendo: Game Cube
• Sony: PlayStation 2
• Microsoft: Xbox

Current generation

• Nintendo: Wii
• Sony: PLAYSTATION 3
• Microsoft: Xbox 360

Next generation

• Let us wait and see what they will announce in the future.

Sure there are also ‘older generations’ with Nintendo 64, PSone, SNES, Dreamcast and many more.

When PS3 and Xbox 360 was announced they became Next-Gen then they got released and therefore must be current generation of consoles.

Oh, and who is going to win the current generation race; who knows. My guess is that they will all 3 be winners, one way or another.

Anyway this is just my opinion on this. I’m sure not all will agree.

I have often been wondering why monitors are like they are; why don’t they make square monitors.

Let’s have a look at previous/current monitors and why I think that wide screen monitors often are no good.

There does exist monitors with other resolutions than the below mentioned once, specially if you look at the notebooks, but the once below are the most common desktop monitor.

Past monitors

In the good old days we had monitors with low resolution, such as 1024×768 which is still very used. Actually, one of my flat screens is 1024×768 pixels and still in use today.

Then 1280×1024 got more normal, especially for 17″ and for some strange reason also 19″ screens. I only used 19″ monitor once and to be honest, it annoyed me. I was used to 17″ and then suddenly I had the SAME RESOLUTION but on a bigger area (19″) so this just meant bigger pixels; no good to me really.

Same resolution but bigger pixels does happen a good bit with the new big monitors also.

So finally things started to make sense, 20″ with 1600×1200, pretty high resolution even compared to our standards.

Wide screen madness

It seems the world went Wide Screen Crazy. Sure wide screen can be great for watching movies or playing games. But I never really saw the point for ‘normal’ use.

Let us have a look at the 20″, the standard resolution is 1600×1200 pixels, but the wide screen is 1680×1050 pixels. This is going from 1.920.000 pixels down to 1.747.200 pixels. For ‘normal’ use it must be great with the taller resolution, so you can view more of your Word or Excel data. The 80 pixels more in the width does not give you much really. Often the 22″ wide screen got the same resolution as the 20″

The 19″ wide is a joke if you ask me, 1440×900 pixels; sure the reduction of number of pixels is not as bad as with 20″ but still, 900 pixels in the height!!

The only reason for me to get a 20″ wide screen would be if it could be rotated 90 degrees.

Let us step up in resolution.

Currently I feel the best monitor is 24″, with 1920×1200 (Notice, same height as normal 20″). When I got my Dell 24″ I was SO shocked to start with, why I didn’t do that earlier (money issue of course). Since then we have seen 27″ (from Dell), also same resolution as the 24″.

Here I can actually see a reason to go from the 24″ to the 27″, IF you use it as extra screen in bed room or such; for movies. Just too bad that they are a lot more expensive, for Dell the 27″ cost around 140% MORE than the 24″. The prices for all monitors have dropped a lot during the last year and the 24″ one seems pretty alright now.

The current top monitor is the 30″ with 2560×1600 pixels. Main problem with the 30″ is of course the very high price and the requirement of special dual DVI linked graphics card. The graphics card issue is probably the smallest; the graphics card I got in my Mac Pro should be able to drive two times 30″ but I’m not sure if my VISA card could.

Multi monitor setup

Often people start out with a single monitor and later invest in a bigger one. Depending on desk space they often find them self using both monitors. For us programmers there is no going back; have you once used two monitors then going back to a single one is out of the questions.

As mentioned in an earlier post (Second graphics card for Apple Mac Pro with Boot Camp) I’m now using a setup with 3 monitors.

From left to right: 17″ Sony SDM-S71 (1280×1024), 24″ Dell 2407WFP (Rotated 90 degrees, 1200×1920) and finally the old 15″ Philips 151AX (1024×768).

The 17″ screen works as main display; so all gaming happens on this monitor in normal screen mode. This is also great for programming as I have source code on the middle screen and can easy debug any game running on the left screen. The right screen is mainly used for MSN, ICQ, Skype and such.

This is a GREAT setup, it gives a great view when you work with source code, Word Documents, PDF files, blogs (surfing the web is a lot nicer). Excel documents are sometimes best viewed in 1920×1200, specially the old ones I have where I would place any chart to the right of the numbers.

Future (Give me a square monitor)

So what’s next? I already got a great setup but that does not make me happy (well, I’m not unhappy either).

I have been considering two ways of extending my current setup as it does allow for one more monitor to be connected.

1. Get one more Dell 24″ of 100% the same type as mine, rotate it and place it next to the current one. Problem with this is that the very latest Dell 24″ does not support rotated display. So I might have to find one on eBay.
2. Get another great 24″ monitor and place it none rotated to the left of the current 24″. This would be the new primary screen; great for gaming and for movies. The old 17″ would then be placed on top of the current 15″, just not sure how as none of them supports wall mounting.

When I sit here and look at the big monitor I just don’t understand why they don’t make square monitors; why do they have to be wide screen. Give me a square monitor with 1920×1920 (or why not 2048×2048) pixels. Make sure pixels are square also of course. Let the size be 52×52cm (20.4×20.4″), given a total of 28″. I’m pretty sure the graphics cards could handle that, it is after all the same number of pixels as a 30″ (4MP). Now I would be happy.

Having two 24″ monitors next to each other (or on top of each other) would give this resolution but with 4cm between each half.

As far as I remember I once read about one company who produced custom designed monitors; they took two ‘normal’ monitors apart and was able to place each display without any distance between them. They didn’t use 24″ but still not a bad idea. I was not able to find the company again, so if someone knows then let me know.

I searched the net and was not able to find any such screens; I wonder why, there must be a market for them.

Since I had an old unused 15″ TFT I decided to ask directly at the Apple Boot Camp forums about support for ATI X 1900 XT and a NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. I didn’t get a 100% confirmation that it would work but I went ahead and bought the graphics card. In case it would not work then the graphics card would go on sale on eBay.

NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT

The card arrived in a box without any fancy pictures on. I’m used to seeing boxes with fancy NVIDIA or ATI/AMD logos and images but then again, this is another market and the card can not be bought in a store so not a real surprise. But I was a bit surprised to see that it came with out CD or any instructions. All I found was some papers about world wide 1 year guarantee and then a sheet: For installation see the documentation that came with the computer. It also came without any bundled games but again, that was not expected.

So I went to Apple’s support site and found some documentation, all very simple.

Installing

Open Mac Pro (No screws), lay it down and remove the holder for the PCI express cards (No screws). Plug the card it. Connect it and turn the Mac on. This is how hardware installation should be.

Screen setup

I’m now using a setup with 3 TFT screens. From left to right: 17″ Sony SDM-S71 (1280×1024), 24″ Dell 2407WFP (Rotated 90 degrees, 1200×1920) and the old 15″ Philips 151AX (1024×768). The plan was to have the 17″ as primary screen.

OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

The new graphics card was detected right away and when I booted I got a window with the settings for the PCI Express lanes, I had just added it to slot 3 but with this I was not able to get more than 1-wide lane. So I moved it to slot 4 and was able to get 8 lanes. The main ATI card is using the 16 lane PCI slot.

I was able to setup the 3 screens as I planned, took 15 minutes to align them in the system preferences so that the mouse moves correct from screen to screen.

Windows XP

I was worried about getting the graphics cards working with Windows XP but this turned out to be without reason. Windows detected the graphics card right away but found no drivers for it. These are on the Windows driver CD that Boot Camp creates, so I was able to install these.

The primary screen was set to the 15″ to start with, but I just disabled the 15″ and the task bar moved over to the 17″ and all worked fine.

Rotating the 24″ monitor went without problems with the NVIDIA control panel. Alignment was as easy as under OS X.

UltraMon

Just wanted to mention this great little tool, a must have if you use multiple monitors. It allows you to move windows between monitors with a single click, resize to cover all monitors (taking into account that monitors does not have same height). It also allows for the task bar to be shown on all monitors. I have it setup so the task bar pr monitor only shows the applications that is running on that monitor.

There is also support for wall paper and screen savers, which can be defined pr monitor. Having 3 different screen savers did fail for me and only one was shown; not a problem for me as I never have screen savers enabled anyway.

Verdict

I had no problems with adding the extra graphics and also no problems with setting the screens up as I wanted. So now I got a rather nice setup, especially for when I’m programming. Having the source code on the 24″ rotated screen is amazing. Really wonder why I never tried that.

Having the 17″ screen as primary is perfect, as it allows games to be played on that. Also great for when working, as the game we are working on will show up on this screen and not cover the editor.

Just wondering what I should use the last output for… One more 24″ or is that over doing it…

The website from ACECAD is now working again and I did some checking there. I will not be updating the review but just add a link here.

Software:

I mentioned the lack of documentation for the software, especially for the new functions, well I was looking in the latest A501
documentation but the software is used for all the DigiMemo products. Looking at the A502 documentation did also not help but the A402/L2 documentation helped to solve the mystery of ‘Online writing’ and ‘Conversion’.

Online Writing

This feature does NOT work with A501; as far as I can tell from documentation it is only for A402 and L2. When enabled it should allow the user to use the notepad and see the result ‘live’ in the software. So if you draw a line on the paper it will appear in the software right away. I fail to see much use for that but never mind, I can’t use it anyway.

Conversion

To enable this feature the software “DigiMemo Handwriting Recognition” must be installed before. It is then possible to convert the handwriting directly from within the normal software. This function did not work with the trial version of MyScript Notes.

Tablet Device

I found another feature that is probably only available when using A402 and L2 is that the notepad can be used as a table device in windows.

Comments from Daniel Klein

My friend Daniel did a posting about the A501 after he read mine; It can be found here (It is in German). His main worry is how hard the pen has to be pressed against the paper before it works. Actually this is holding him of from buying a DigiMemo notepad. For me it is not a problem as I often just do a few quick notes but where he will be writing a lot. I just did a test, did some writing and a small drawing where I didn’t care about the symbol in the display that indicates it receives info. If I had ink on paper then I was happy. I held the pen as I would do whenever I take notes on ‘normal’ paper. The result wasn’t that bad really. I had a few letters missing a bit, one letter was all gone. So all in all I was very happy.

Shock factor

Oh man. My handwriting is really bad. I have a feeling that the DigiMemo might help with improving my handwriting because there is NO way I’m going to share my notes with anyone before I get better.

There is a follow up to this review which gives an update on documentation and the new features. I also did a new test to check how hard the pen has to be pressed before it works. Find this follow up here.

Review of: DigiMemo A501
Manufacturer: ACECAD
Manufacturer’s web site: http://www.acecad.com.tw
Description: Digital notepad that makes it possible to drawn on paper and at the same time record the drawing in digital format.

The A501 is a digital notepad that allows you to draw on normal paper and while doing so it will record all information and you can later import this into the PC software (Check ACECAD’s website for Linux and Mac software) and manipulate it using the software.

I often do notes in connection with programming, blogging & game design ideas and thought it would be handy to have them on the PC. This would make it easier to share the notes with friends to hear their opinion. Of course I could always scan the notes in but this is much smoother. I paid 129 CHF for the A501 which equals to 103 USD/80 EUR. This is the most expensive notepad that I ever bought, but then again this one is different.

I got a spare pen and a 512 MB Compact Flash card at the same time.

The notepad

Before ordering the A501 I was considering the A401 which is an A4 one (A501 is A5) difference was also 32 MB instead of 8 MB. I had a feeling the A4 one would be too big, as the pad is larger than the paper; around 8 cm at top and 2.5 at the bottom and 3cm at each side. Actually, comparing with a normal A4 paper sheet they are almost equal in size. When I did receive the A501 I was shocked, the box was SO big… I doubled checked yes, said A501 and not A401.

If you check the manufacture web side then you will find no A401 or A501 but instead the A402 and A502. They are not on sale here in Switzerland yet, so that’s why I went with the A501. As far as I can tell the only difference is 32 MB vs 8MB for the A501/A502.

The A501 supports 100% normal paper, max 12mm height for a notepad; one was included in the box. To be able to record the drawing a special pen is needed; this pen does work as a normal one also. Both pad and pen requires batteries and they where also included. It also came with manual which for me was in German and the CD with the software was in English. Getting German documentation is normal here in Switzerland so I will not complain. The A501 also came with a USB cable (I read in another review that it does not use the standard USB mini-plug, I’m not able to verify that at the moment, will do later and update this review) and also a paper clip.

The pen can be placed at the bottom of the notepad; which will be okay as long as I just use the notepad here at home but if I put it in a bag then I don’t find it secure enough, so I rather have it in a pocket. The paper clip is for when you need to draw on single sheets of paper; which I did not test.

There is a display that shows what page is selected and if there have been drawn on it. It will also give warnings when 90% of the storage is used and when full.

Using the notepad

The A501 was very easy to get working, insert the batteries (got to be put correct or it all dies). Then turn it on and you are ready to draw. There is a few buttons on the pad:

• Power on/off
• Next page
• Previous page
• Next Free page
• Erase

So to get started with writing/drawing you turn it on and press “next free page” and you can use the pen as a normal pen. I read other reviews where they wrote that they had problems with getting all data recorded, the pen have to be hold straight and pressed a bit. Nice thing is that the display shows when it receives info from the pen, so if you don’t see this symbol then the pen should be pressed harder on the paper. I never had this problem while using the notepad.

So while you are drawing/writing it will record all movements and store it. It can hold up to 999 pages assuming you have enough space. The test drawing I did (see picture) used 32 KB, so the internal memory would be able to hold 255 of them. The 512 MB CF card would be able to handle more than 16.000 of them, so you might ask why I bought 512 MB since it is WAY more than enough. Well, it was the smallest I could find. One note, if you buy a CF card then it MUST be from SanDisk and max 512 MB otherwise they do not guarantee it will work.

One very nice feature when using a CF card is that no card reader/writer is needed, just leave the CF card in the A501, connect the USB cable and two removable drives will appear in Windows; one for the 8MB internal memory and one for the CF card.

The A501 is of course heavier than a normal notepad. It weights almost 700g with paper, which is pretty much if you compare to the weight of just the A5 paper which is around 160g. For quick notes you can hold it but I found that if I do a lot of drawing/writing then it was easiest to use when it was laying on a table, so perfect for taking notes at a conference or meeting.

The software

The A501 came with a CD with the software. I installed the software and felt it was working fine but I then checked their web site and found version 2.2. Shocking the version on the CD was 1.0. So I strongly suggest that you download the latest software. Just a pity that they don’t have updated manual for the software also, saw it now features “online writing” and “conversion”. I just don’t have any idea what it is and how it is used.

It is nice that the A501 does not require any drives (At least not with Windows XP), once connected by USB it will appear as a removable drive. So you can also copy other files to this “drive” if you want to bring your other files with you, not that they can be used on the A501 of course.

The software allows you to import the files generated using the A501, when you save from the software it will use another format (also their own format). When I did this first time I was surprised to see that it had the horizontal lines from the paper included. This can be enabled/disabled (not in version 1.0); it is possible to import a background also. I would here have liked to have different predefined backgrounds, such as squares.

The imported digital page can be manipulated in different ways, you can select an area and change the color, highlight text and change the thickness of the pen used. You can erase parts, move them around and even scale parts. It is also possible to define text areas where you can enter text directly using the Windows fonts. You can also export the image to GIF, PNG, BMP and JPEG. I noticed that the resolution is higher with version 2.0 of the software. BMP files are too large to be used really; my test page used 9 MB. It is also possible print and email the page. When printing the background can be included or it can use a blank background. When emailing the page it is possible to select if the page should be attached as JPG or ACECAD’s own e-book format. They automatic add a text line to the email with a URL to where there the software can be downloaded.

One thing missing is OCR, so the software can not recognize the handwritten text. So you will not be able to load the data into Word and continue editing. I did find one program for it ‘MyScript Notes‘; I will give the trial version a try and if it is any good then expect a review of it later. My feeling is that it will fail with my handwriting; just as most people do!

Result of a test page

I did a drawing especially for this review and here are the various versions/stages. Hope people will not mind my bad handwrite.

Click the images to see the high resolution image:

Digital camera.	Saved as image with background lines.	Saved as image without background lines.	Modified.

The Good

• Easy to setup, just a 10 minutes job; worth reading the manual.
• Software works fine and offers a nice set of features to manipulate the text.
• Easy to use.
• No need for a card reader/writer when using a CF card.

The Bad

• A bit heavy to hold but works fine on a table.
• Lack of documentation for updated software but the basic usage is documented.
• No OCR support in software; the software MyScript Notes does support the format used by DigiMemo but is rather expensive.
• My handwriting still looks very bad

The Conclusion
I will be using the notepad for all future notes that I do and will archiving all notes digitally. No more mess with notes laying all over without a system. Will also be very useful for meetings and conferences; where I can do all notes and then clean them up later and re-order them. I can recommend the A501 for people who do lots of notes which should be kept in an organized way.