The responses to this are probably going to be based highly off of personal preference, but to those of you who have already attended Mac: did you prefer taking notes on a computer during lectures, or did prefer to write your notes by hand?

Any feedback would be appreciated!

Writing notes by hand or computer doesn't matter so much as understanding the material as you're transcribing them. Handwritten notes is a highly physical and tactile process that for reasons I can't explain, is better at incorporating the ideas you're writing down into your memory.

Computer -> facebook -> tetris & stalking
Paper -> doodling --> drawing penises on other people's papers.

choose whichever is less distracting for you

I totally agree with Ryan, I always understood concepts better when I had written out the notes by hand.

A computer is useful when the prof is shovelling way too much information at one time *cough* Kajiura or if you want to write directly onto powerpoints.

Just try out both styles for all your classes and find which you like for each. A lot of people, myself included, seem to prefer handwritten for math/chem/physics when formulas are involved and a computer for everything else. However, I know people who write out everything by hand so definitely find what you are comfortable with.

I like printing off powerpoint slides and then taking notes on them.

I'd say it depends a lot on your note-writing style. I tend to be a person that draws a lot of sketches/pictures, arrows connecting thoughts & ideas etc. (Especially in bio!) so I find hand-writing notes is much more effective.

Last time I brought my laptop to class in first year I ended up playing StarCraft in the middle of Bio 1M03.. Needless to say I didn't learn much until I was cramming for the exam.

I find typing notes is easier for everything other than Math/Physics/Chem

Typing is also really useful since you can search your notes later when you're studying or working on a project.

For first year chem/bio, the profs provide powerpoint presentations full of figures and graphs, and I found it most useful to print those off and bring them with me to take notes on (pretty sure 99% of people do this for chem). For math on the other hand, it is best to bring lined/graph paper to take notes down on.

A lot of profs also provide notes in PDF instead of powerpoint.
I found it MUCH easier to just type out notes instead of printing and organizing them.
Check out this post I made earlier in the year, it'll make your life much easier

I personally found that although you could probably type word for word what the Prof says, that hand written notes are better...

I found that even though computer typed notes are usually more thorough, not everything the Prof says is important. This can be difficult when studying for exams when you have too much info and then feel overwhelmed with reviewing and knowing it all.

Hand written notes in my experience have always been better engraved in my memory because you have to write quickly, and remember what it is that you are writing down as it is being said... Not that typing notes doesn't use the same thought process behind that, I just found that it was more easy to recall info from my memory if I wrote it down.

I also then usually rewrite my handwritten notes into a condensed version before an exam to review, which is generally easier to do when you're copying something off paper to another paper than from screen to paper. But everyone absorbs material differently and has their own individual learning style and habits.

For me it really depended on the class. If it was a class like communication or organizational behaviour where you only need notes in words typing worked pretty well.

If it was something like physics or electricity and circuits where you need alot of diagrams, typing notes was nearly useless since you can't incorporate diagrams/arrows etc. (unless you have a tablet...which i doubt you'd bring to class)

Hand writing notes all the way mainly because I have mostly chem, physics and math courses, but also because my laptop is way too heavy to lug around campus especially when I had to speed walk from CNH to ITB. As well, laptops are simply annoying in most lecture halls where you have limited elbow and leg room and people are climbing over you to get to an empty seat.

Yeah definitely depends on the class.

Math, orgo, chem, and so forth - you need hand written notes.

English, anthropology and other humanities courses, even biology to an extent (unless you're drawing molecules and such) - typing is probably easier.

I used my laptop for taking notes in word-heavy classes (psych, economics, programming, materials science), and I hand wrote notes for math-and-formula-heavy classes (physics, calculus, chemistry, etc).

As previous posters have stated, it depends on the class. My materials & engineering classes: 100% handwritten. Society and Theatre & Film classes, sometimes handwritten, sometimes typed.

I find that writing notes, however, in classes that the notes easily be typed out in, can be beneficial if you type out the notes later when studying, so you have to go through EVERYTHING again, not just skim.