[Helmling]

I feel like I've been living in a cave, but until I attended a conference last week, I had no idea you could use a stylus to write on an iPad.

I, however, don't want to carry one around to take notes, but I'd love to have the app for my wife's (soon-to-arrive) iPad and I'd like to be able to do the same on my iPhone.

Can anyone recommend a stylus and an app that will let me keep hand-written notes?

How about one that does OCR on your handwriting?

Best of all, something that will let me easily save to Dropbox? (That's too much to ask, I bet.)

[Phileas]

There are a number of handwriting apps out there, with save to dropbox. Just take a look around the app store.

I've tested one OCR app, Writepad, which sucked so unbelievably badly it would have been funny had it not been a waste of five bucks. Note Taker HD was, for me, the best of the handwriting (non OCR) apps, but in the end I abandoned all of them and returned to the keyboard. I found myself being considerably faster typing than handwriting.

The screen of the iPad, and the iPhone even more so, is simply too small to accomodate handwritten notes.

[Silent]

I'd suggest you take a look around the Application Store on your iPhone, or iPad.
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Be sure to read the description on each application you find. Just to make sure it suits your style best.