[devindotcom]

I've actually been pleasantly surprised by the recognition in Windows 7 and 8. But it needs to be more flexible - who wants to write in a little field? Note-taking should stay rich, it should transcribe in the background, make the text searchable, and keep the layout and such in a bit of simple hidden html or the like.

But yeah switching is a pain. and the interaction vocabulary has to be rewritten for stylus input.

[andrewjshults]

Have you tried OneNote? It's the one program that really highlights the benefits of a (pressure sensitive) stylus based tablet. To this date, it's one of the things I miss about my old Toshiba M200. OneNote allows for freeform handwriting, audio recording and transcribes both to make them searchable and copyable. When writing papers and such in college it was great to be able to search for a phrase in either my notes or the lecture and get the full context. The Windows 7 upgrade made the handwriting recognition was rather impressive as well.