Having the N810 for nine months now, I recently started playing with the handwriting on the N810 as I have a Nokia 5800 sice May with rather good HW recognotion.
So I compared both and came to the following conclusions:

- 5800 is faster than 5800 you can write with almost the same speed as with pen and paper. With N810 you have to write slower. But on the other hand, the N810 does not require you to switch between digits and letters (a letter 'O' is a circle and a '0' zero a slashed circle) and the N810 does not aotomaticaaly change case which is convenient: on the 5800 in some cases when you clearly write a lowercase "a", it 'strtoupper's it to an "A" and in other cases the other way areound. Defining shortcuts is also easier on the N810, e.g. a simple gesture for www. or .com.
My conclusion is that the HW recognition of the N810 is good but you have to write slowly and the writing pad is a little bit too small and inserting characters into existing texts is also not easy. Furthermore you have to write letters not too far right from the previois one otherwise it introduces a space.

What are your experiences ?

I used a lot of HW recognition systems.

To my opninion, the one in our tablets is the worse, because it's so slow that you will use any other available option, including a tiny stylus on-screen keyboard.

Palm's Graffiti is a lot more efficient, you have to learn special letters, but it's very accurate and fast when you get used to it.

WinMo Transcriber and it's familly (calligrapher, lasts Apple Newton HW system ...) are a lot easier to use, you can write very naturally, but it's not perfectly accurate, depending on you handwriting ability. To my opinion, and as i can have a very neat handwriting, I like this solution the best.

None are slow like the sh.t we have on NIT.

I would happily buy calligrapher software if it was available on Maemo.

By chance, on N810 we have the keyboard, far from perfect but a lot more efficient ...

I humbly disagree that the tablet HWR is the worst. Long discussion here, http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...189#post192189.

1) You have to set the handwriting speed to FAST, menu>control panel>Text input settings>Handwriting speed one block, towards the " - " sign, towards left, 5 blocks means snail slow.
2) Practice it by keep using it, just like the way to do type writer. You need to learn and then practice, and then it will serve you.

The reason why other HWR system is better, is because YOU, the user, have learnt it and is comfortable with it NOW, and forgot about the learning curve.

As in the above link, this discussion has been beaten to death. One year later today, I am very comfortable with HWR. It is a lot faster for me then the OSK. I am currently using palm, the GVM, and the tablet. These two systems do use different format on the HWR, and since I have been using both of them, ALL THE TIME, I am qualified to say, the tablet HWR is NOT inferior. Before I wrote this sentence, I went back to palm/gvm and wrote a few sentences under either system, I stand firm, that the tablet HWR is different, no inferior. I repeat, one has to go thru the learning curve in order to "have" it.

bun

Thanks Bunanson, but i spent quite some time to try HWR on my tablets, and i used the fastest speed available, but it's still toooooooo slow for efficient use.

The one line system is too limited, the end-of-the-line trick unconvenient ... And when I write a text, i'm not w-r-i-t-i-n-g-s-l-o-w-l-y-l-i-k-e-a-6-y-e-a-r-s-o-l-d-k-i-d ..., i can't, i don't want, it's just boring. If i try to write almost as fast as in Palm's Graffiti, it doesnt follow, and Transcriber beats the comfort, the freedom AND the speed of the system in our NITs.

You say :
"The reason why other HWR system is better, is because YOU, the user, have learnt it and is comfortable with it NOW, and forgot about the learning curve."

But you don't know me enough, i can be quite persistent, you know, especially for futile things (unfortunately). The overall system of this HWR is, for me, a lot less efficient than the others I mentioned, even after a reasonable learning time.

Nevertheless, i'm happy to see that there is at least one happy user ... maybe some more ?

I just love to argue, guess learned it here in the forum

I have to conceed, itthe tablet is a tard slow, like you said. But not like some of the veterens here, put it as unusable. As I repeat, once you learn the alphabets, it simply works. Learning the alphabets, the way they scribed, is the same even for the most acclaimed palm.

bun

Haha, you know, handwriting is very personnal, it's a matter of taste and manual skill ...

So what's not good for me can be very good for you, and vice versa.

Thanks for the tip, I thought 5 blocks is FAST (as you see a + there), When I followed your advice (1 block near the '-') the HW was *faster*, about the same as the Nokia 5800 in fast mode.
So people when you think it is slow, set HW speed to ONE block like bunanson says.

I find the on-screen keyboard just fine, even on my N810.

I spent a LONG time working on an alternate form of writing characters -- I forget what it is called -- and it was completely intolerable, even after weeks of intensive, fanatical practice.

I liked Graffiti quite a bit at one time, but I think that if one gets serious, none of this approaches the ease of typing on a regular, full-sized keyboard. Where I'm typing now, I don't have to think, and I get up to 70 w.p.m. without effort. Of course, I'm on a desktop computer, not a tablet.

In the long run, I still think that speech-to-text will work out eventually on tablets, when processor speed becomes sufficient. I have Dragon NaturallySpeaking on this desktop, and it is pretty amazing.

For professional, extensive typing, a desktop computer is best, and a big screen helps too, like 19 inches or so, though it's hard to fit in your pocket

I used Dragon in 2003 and it was horrible and I had given up. But I have friends since learned it and progress with it and telling me to give a shot recently. I went and got a copy and I will give a serious shot soon. But the point I want to make, whether it is speech to text or graffiti, one still have to go thru a learning curve. Even for Dragon, one has to adapt or learn the way the software interpret. ('A' software developer gave a demonstration for the Dragon and made it correct 60% of the time, only a month ago. He apologize he is more into packaging and program development and has NOT master the way Dragon learned his speech! Hey this is someone tries to sell his stuff!!!). For the casual users, or for someone that is NOT "serious", the learning curve is going to be deep. Finally, just like water, it flows to the least resistence, i.e., keyboard, speech, graffiti, whatever the user finds the least 'painful' will be that user's choice. Being said, a good piece software does lessen up the learning curve, I do agree.

bun

Hey, bun, are you really able to do HWR faster than type on the OSK? I'm surprised.

Last year l spent some time with HWR. Then I did a test. I memorized a couple sentences. Then I practiced writing them and typing them as fast as I could. For the HWR test *I didn't worry about making mistakes and I didn't deduct for mistakes.* When I timed them, I was clearly faster typing with the stylus on the OSK. (The standard OSK was faster than QuickScript, too, btw.)