Is there a good iPad program that will let me take handwritten notes and then convert them to something like a Word document?
Hmm. Don’t know about converting to Word. Do you want it to convert your handwriting to typed text? If that is the case, I got nothing. My favorite written note taking app is Noteshelf, which will allow you to export them as .pdf files. But I’m not sure if that is what you are looking for.
Evernote will OCR a handwritten note for search purposes, but not to create a text file. I think OneNote will do what you’re asking for, but I don’t know how good the OCR is.
This isn’t really what you’re looking for, as you’re looking for a program, but it’s kind of related.
I just got my sister a Pencil, which is kind of cool in that it’s a stylus which communicates with the tablet and tells it to ignore your hand and just pay attention to the stylus. The effect is that you can lean your hand on the tablet and write normally, without screwing it up.
Like I said, not really the same thing you’re looking for, but related tech that might be useful to you if you are hand writing stuff on a tablet a lot.