Question for the technologically proficient

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I am taking two courses this semester that are heavy on reading and lectures. This is fine, but I think I will need help staying organized.

Is there one all purpose machine (laptop, tablet, smartphone etc.) that will help me to:
--either take better notes, or record lectures
-- read .doc and .pdf files of articles that are required reading
--possibly keep an accurate schedule so that i can get rid of my 2 ton "day planner"

Any ideas? I know no one system is perfect, but I am trying to streamline my efforts as much as possible. It would be nice to get rid of the extra worry over missing/forgetting/losing things.

Thanks!

I've seen people use various devices. Some use tablet PC hybrids that come with a stylus and write the notes on them but I've heard the design is lacking. Other's type notes, and I've seen something similar to a wacom tablet that one can lay a piece of paper over and take notes.

As an alternative to an all in one combo, you might get a small laptop and Livescribe. Livescribe is an interesting technology. It's a pen which is used with special hardcopy notebooks. The pen has a recorder and a small sensor that detects it's location on the notebook, and the pen settings are actually controlled by tapping a console printed on the inner cover of every notebook, and at the bottom of every page in the notebook. The pen records both very high quality audio, as well as what you are writing on the paper. When you are done writing on the paper, you can play back the audio that was playing at the time you wrote something, by tapping what you were writing with the pen. You can also speed up, or slow down the audio if the instructor was talking too quickly, and factor in for a delay if your written notes are out of sync with the audio.

The pen has a USB dock it uses to charge and transfer data to the livescribe desktop. You can play back the entire lecture with writing animation from there, though you can also play the audio back from the pen alone. You can also save the lecture audio and notes in digital form.

The only downside is, the pen has to be docked at a computer to charge, and, at least with older models, once the pen is full you must remove the data from it by transferring it to the computer and "archive" the notebook, meaning you will not longer be able to replay the lectures in the notebook itself from the pen.

Wow that sounds ideal! Thanks. I need to research those some more.

For now, today I just bought a basic digital recorder that Sony makes. Next I'm going to find a cheap laptop. Right now I have to share a computer with everybody in the house, so having my own would be helpful.

When I asked about it, my professor didn't mind my recording the lectures. He also offered to post the powerpoints afterward, so now I can just enjoy listening without worrying about missing something.

Other than this Livescribe thing (I've never even heard of it, but personally i don't think I'd need it--might be good for others though) I'd just recommend a laptop. They offer the most versatile note-taking, and you know that they can read .doc and .pdf files. If you want to save some money, rather than install Microsoft Office on the laptop install OpenOffice, which is free. It can read .doc files and save in some of the older .doc formats, as well as the default .odf format. They also aren't that much more expensive than an iPad. Personally I find the digital agendas rather overrated, but if you want to try one out I'm sure that there is software for it.

Smartphones can me nice, but probably not what you'd want. They'd be a frig to take notes on (of course, I might find that just because I don't text, whereas I'm quite a fast typist). However, I think they do tend to have better agenda software, and the advantage that it is easier to take them out and look at your agenda than on a laptop.

a tablet would be a good option for what you want to do; the high-end ones (specifically apple and samsung) should be able to allow you to record a lecture and at the same time allow note-taking in some text-editor program.

as for smartphones; android systems come with "swipe", allowing for very fast typing with minimal practice; when i got my swypephone, my typing speed easily doubled within a day (compared to my old phone; a full-size keybord is still faster)
there now also is a new samsung phone, the galaxy note, which is advertised to combine a phone and a tablet, though i have not yet have hands-on experience with that one.

another option, though i dont remember the brand, possible it is an option for all brands, is getting a tabled with an external keybord; either via bluetooth or a physical connection to get rid of one of the few disadvantages a tablet has