Note Taking Software
Note taking: the answer (almost) to my prayers
A couple of months ago I wrote about a flawed gem of a program which I’ve been using since the early ’90s – Info Select. I wanted to replace it and I wasted weeks of real time testing various alternatives.
When looking for note-taking software you’re invariably referred to PIMs – Personal Information Managers – but they tend to be obsessed with email, contact management and time management.
What I need is an information manager. A repository for all my notes, plans, and mountains of reference data. If it’s also a PIM I can live with it, but I use Gmail, Yahoo mail and Google Calendar for most PIM functions, so it’s not necessary.
My main criteria:
- Fast, accurate search and retrieval of stored text data files is a must. Info Select does this brilliantly. Image handling would be a plus, but it's not vital.
- I switch often between 3 different computers. Synchronizing my data files between them with SyncBack is easy (MS’s free Synctoy is good too), but it’s a hassle I could do without 3 or 4 times a day, so using a web based application sitting on a server available 24/7 halfway round the world would have some advantages. Alternatively, a program capable of running from a USB memory stick would be acceptable, but only just. USB sticks are unreliable and Windows is often reluctant to “safely remove” or “unmount” them.
- An operating system agnostic program which can be used with Windows, a Mac, or Linux would be a plus.
- Free would be good too.
I’m retired and need to watch my pennies.
The final candidates:
- Microsoft One Note
An excellent program, but I’d have been obliged to buy 2 licences to cover my 3 machines. It’s Windows only at present. Even though it misses out on more than one of my criteria, it was my second choice because it’s so good. Microsoft provide a 60 day free trial and it's a very reasonable price for use on 2 PCs.- I'd still need to synchronise data between machines.
- Wikis are collections of web pages which can be edited in a browser. The most well known is Wikipedia but you can also run one on your own computer from a local file or from an external USB drive.
- Tiddlywiki
As you'll know if you've used Wikipedia, wikis are very good for navigating linked reference data. Tiddlywiki is the most suitable for portability. The lack of WYSIWYG editing makes its editing awkward for constantly changing files like To Do lists.- Unlike most wikis, which require a server, TiddlyWiki is self contained in a single HTML file which you can keep on a USB stick or even a floppy.
- A big plus — TiddlyWiki, like all wikis, is totally OS agnostic and will run in any browser on any system.
- It's a very good tiny program – just a single file really – and it's free!
- Wiki on a Stick
Similar to TiddlyWiki. - MediaWiki – which powers Wikipedia – and TikiWiki are both very powerful wikis which could fill the bill. Unfortunately they must be installed on a server; remotely, or on the local computer. Synchronization between computers would be a mission.
- Tiddlywiki
- TreeDBNotes
Very good, but if I’m paying I believe MS One Note is far better value. I couldn’t figure out how to do a global search: the search shortcut keys didn’t work. Maybe a Vista compatibility problem. I note that Vista is not mentioned on their Windows OS list. - Info Select 2007
After nearly two decades I’m losing patience with Micro Logic’s cavalier attitude to users and their extortionate prices. The program is buggy in some areas and it’s bloated with tools which are powerful, but done better by many free applications. The interface is stuck in a time when dinosaurs walked the Earth. Text manipulation and formatting should be much easier in a US$249 program.
Having said that, Info Select’s data search core function is outstanding and hard to match. - Stickies for Windows
The best free sticky notes program. Excellent for todos, alarms and sticky notes, but not powerful enough to match Evernote. Nor is it intended for this purpose. It's Windows only and there's only one developer who may get run over by a bus. Perish the thought that he should come to such an untimely “stickie” end! - Post-it® Digital Notes is a very good commercial sticky notes program, it handles images but it's not really suitable for my purposes.
- The Winner! Evernote
I tried Evernote some time ago when it was first released in Beta. I didn’t appreciate its power. I didn’t really “get it” but subsequently I heard so many informed users gushing about it that I looked again. I’d have saved myself a lot of time if I’d investigated it more closely first time around.
The verdict
Evernote is almost perfect for my requirements. It’s radically different to anything else I’ve seen, so getting a grasp of how it works before jumping to conclusions was helpful.
A good start when the program's running is to press F1 to browse the online help information and then look at the keyboard shortcuts file in the Help Menu. These shortcuts reveal just what can be done with Evernote.
There’s an excellent free version, but I’m so impressed that I’ve upgraded to the Pro version for US$45 per year (alternatively: $5/month – do the arithmetic).
- Evernote can be used in your browser as a web based application like Google Mail; as a normal local application like Outlook; or, for me the perfect compromise, as a combination of the two. I use the local program but it synchronizes with Evernote’s server at user defined intervals – I set it to 15 minute updates.
When I’ve finished with my Desktop and wish to move to my laptop, if it hasn't synchonized since my latest edit I just click the Synchro button and it updates all changes immediately and quickly. When I boot up my laptop, it syncs as soon as I'm on line. - Click on the thumbnail image on the right to see a full-size image of Evernote. »
- If, perish the thought, the Internet is unavailable, I can synchronize my local data files between machines just as I did in the bad old days before Evernote.
- Searching for notes is very fast.
- Evernote is available as a Windows or Mac application, but you can also use it online in a browser with Linux. It has add-ons for Internet Explorer and for Firefox which enable you to send web pages or selected data directly from a browser to new Evernote Notes.
- Notes can be created and edited with the keyboard or using handwriting. You can add web pages, images, scanned or photographed text and pdf files. With the Pro version you can add any type of file, including MS Office documents. This is great! I’ve copied my most commonly edited word processing and spreadsheet files into notes in Evernote. I can now open, edit and save them on any computer with MS Office installed and they’re synchronized along with the other Evernote data.
- One thing which annoys some new users. You can save your notes in one Notebook or you can split them between any number of Notebooks, but there’s no tree structure – those Notebooks can’t be nested, so there’s a practical limit to how many you can cope with.
This is not a bug! Nor is it an oversight!
The excellent boolean search capability and the provision for unlimited note tags (which can be nested) makes finding your stuff a breeze. You don’t need nested Notebooks or a tree structure. Think of the Gmail philosophy: search, don’t organize. Organizing data files can get in the way of searching. Does Google need to structure the web? No. Does lack of structure inhibit a Google search. Not a bit.
One example: your friend Egbert is a member of your squash club, he also owns your favourite restaurant and he’s your son’s Scoutmaster. Where do you put him in your data tree? 3 different places? Easy answer — don’t have a tree. You can allot his note (or notes) tags which cover all bases. Egbert can be a tag too. - Evernote even finds text in your images (One Note does too) and your scanned or photographed hand written notes! How cool is that?
A full report on Evernote coming up soon. This is a seriously good program. The free version is just as good as the paid version, but with less data allowance per month, no capacity to read Office files, and it shows a small advertisement in the lower left corner of your window which was no big deal to me but it infuriates some users. No pleasing some people.
There are a few things I’d like to add to their feature list, but it’s new on the scene and it’s splendid as it is. I can’t wait to see the next version.
Get it here. Get it today!
Free or paid, it’s top-shelf software.
Keyboard shortcuts for Evernote
Click right here to download the MistyWindow Evernote keyboard shortcuts cheatsheet. You'll need a PDF reader program such as the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it and print it.
Click this link for the cheatsheet in an Excel 2007 file – you can print it from Excel 2007 or OpenOffice 3.
If you have an older version of Excel you’ll need to download the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 file formats from here.
Have your say
This information is an updated version of my original blog post at My Wits' End. If you'd like to read the comments from other people about Evernote — or to comment yourself — please visit this link.
