The handwriting recognition is pretty good, but it's obviously far from perfect. The only thing I've found it greatly useful for is its presence in MS OneNote. It stores converted text transparently parallel to handwriting, so you can search your notes without having to convert them to text (which, in my experience, never works the way you want it to). I use the tablet feature in math and physics, but I just type in economics.
MS OneNote is an incredibly useful note-taking application, by the way. One of the coolest things I've found with it is the recording feature. The onboard mic on my tablet is pretty good and picks up the lecturer if they're wearing a microphone or the room is small. OneNote adds bookmarks in the recording as you write, allowing you to click on a button that appears when you mouseover a line to play whatever it was recording when you wrote it. It's really easy to keep organized as well.