I'm a student also, but I've been using the iPad for this. I don't take any notes on the iPad itself because the courses I need to take notes on are mathematical, so I simply write on paper and then when I come back home I scan it and append the scans to an evergrowing PDF file that is synced to my iPad.

I'm looking for a replacement for my iPad 2, but I can't settle on anything because all the non-iPad tablets have a widescreen, which I believe is poor choice when it comes to reading PDF textbooks.

Right now I read my PDF textbooks in landscape mode, and I use GoodReader to crop the margins, and everything looks fabulous. I'm worried that if I move to a widescreen tablet, I will end up with less vertical space and wasted horizontal space ("black bars" due to incompatible aspect ratios of the page and the screen).

How's your experience when it comes to reading these kind of textbooks? Any chance you could provide screenshots of how these textbooks look like when you read them in landscape mode?

FYI with OneNote and a digitizer stylus as the Surface Pro comes with you can just write your notes on the screen. OneNote will recognize the handwriting and allow you to search through it etc.

Sorry if you already know that, from the way your comment is phrased it looks like you don't so I thought I'd throw it out.

I don't think it'd be particularly efficient. I need to be able to write proofs (which include lots of math symbols) and draw diagrams very quickly. I've seen people do it with digitizers, but the results ends up being rather poor. Pen & paper still looks best.

The Surface Pro, with OneNote, works extremely well for this, more efficient than paper. OneNote is buggy and crashes, and the Surface is sometimes slow---so it isn't perfect---but it is still better than paper. High-quality pen input (except at the screen edges), different colors, copy-paste and undo.

For reading pdfs, the widescreen is annoying and claustrophobic, and I haven't found any Windows PDF reader that is comparable to Apple's Preview application. Occasionally I've "printed" pdfs to OneNote, to read and edit them there, but this doesn't work great. (You can't drag pdfs into OneNote because Windows and pdfs barely work together at all.)

Is there a usable handwriting recognizer which can deal with heavy math notation?

I came across MyScript yesterday, and have been very impressed. It's an SDK which can recognize handwritten math (among other things). It has correctly recognized everything I've thrown at it so far, even though I'm using a mouse so my writing's pretty crappy.

I'm seriously considering trying to build something with the API. I'm not sure what; I just want to play with the cool technology. Perhaps an app which gives you an algebra question, then uses math recognition to interpret your working. It could then see that you made a mistake on step three (for example).

Perhaps I've just late to the party, but I'm still astounded that this is possible.

You can check out a demo here: http://webdemo.visionobjects.com/home.html#equation

Wow! This is seriously impressive.

Windows comes with a dedicated math handwriting input panel. Totally random, all because of their long (failed) push for Tablet PCs. I'm not sure how well it works though.

It needs a lot of massaging, at least for my handwriting. But it's been a while that I tried it with an actual pen. The main problem is that it recognizes strokes, so if you go back and close a gap in a symbol to make it appear right the recognizer will think you changed o to σ or something like that.

Back in uni I was able to take math notes quite well by typing in Word. The math notation there is similar enough to LaTeX (including most macros for symbols) but types much faster. But that's not handwriting, admittedly.

You really need a 600 dpi screen to do math notes.

I used to do math notes on my ipad goodnotes since it has a zoom window.

In addition, you can record interviews/lectures/etc to your Surface/laptop and sync the audio with your handwritten notes in OneNote.

This little-known feature is as old as Windows XP Tablet Edition....

Your problem is that you have an iPad 2. If you use a retina iPad, you will be able to read a PDF in landscape if you can read a book. The screen simply becomes almost as good as print.

I've read many math papers and books this way.

No, I'm saying that textbook reading on the iPad 2 is a good experience to me, aside from the rare textbook that has very narrow margins (meaning that the text is pretty small), and two-column papers.

Btw, do you have a good way to read two-column papers?

I find that reading textbooks on the widescreen isn't all that bad actually. As far as writing math equations, like someone else mentioned, Windows has a dedicated equation writing tool that works really quite well. Otherwise, just plugin the keyboard and use LaTeX.

Personally, I have to draw/annotate circuit diagrams and the Surface Pro is so far superior to paper it's not even funny. I couldn't imagine switching back - taking notes with a full laptop/keyboard just seems archaic to me.

For mathematical writing I've been using Lyx which is a Latex WYSIWYG application. Once you know the shortcut keys it works rather well. Nowadays I often work directly in Lyx rather than on paper first and then type it into Lyx. It encourages you to work cleanly and correctly rather than quickly and sloppily, so in the end it saves me a lot of time. The big disadvantage is that it's hard to incorporate drawings.

I only have a Surface RT :( sad days. Can't say I have any complaints with reading Kindle books or PDFs.

OneNote (+ digitizer) is indeed amazing ... I don't have a surface, but I do have a series 7 slate, and I have to say that the writing/drawing experience on win8 is really really nice. Considering upgrading it to the pro 2 now.

You won't regret the upgrade my friend! I'm actually thinking about buying the docking station for my Surface. I think once I get 8.1 on there and the screen scaling issues are fixed, I'll do that.

Downvoted you because this looks like astroturfing. New account, seemingly random nickname, a persona matching the target audience of this site and several postings with purely positive content and a style that doesn't look right on HN.

That said, the Surface Pro 2 looks really appealing.

8.1 screen scaling is awesome. Flatmate has a iMac with Windows 8.1 on it, 27" display and a low-res 24" display, Windows 8.1 fixed the scaling for the 2nd monitor now that you can set different scaling on each monitor.