Well, the only viable input on the stock 770 is the virtual keyboard. Handwriting recognition is mostly there for show, it doesn't work.

If you splurge on an external bluetooth keyboard (which you can get working on the 2005 OS with a hack) you can type in text quite comfortably. You'd have something approaching a mini-laptop that is much easier to carry.

It's also possible your needs would be better served by a Pocket PC. One of the newer VGA machines have far better screens than the 770 (lower res, at 640x480 instead of 800x480, but qualitatively much better - white is paper white, not a weird sparkly white as it is on the 770) and there is a TON of software out there, including for instance PhatNotes and Calligrapher. The latter is the best handwriting recognition software I've ever seen, and PhatNotes is a great notetaking application - you can categorize, sort and even put separate colors to those notes.

You could even easily use the built-in Notes in the Pocket PC and automatically sync those over to a PC with Outlook, and of course a keyboard would work perfectly on the Pocket PC too.

The 770 is a great machine for what it is, but it can't touch a Pocket PC when it comes to organising your life.

I'd recommend a Fujitsu-Siemens LOOX N560 if you look into Pocket PC's - the high-end LOOX series are fantastic.