I have spent a small fortune over the years on an endless variety of notetaking and data capture programs. There aren't many I haven't bought or at least trialled. Nothing has ever felt "just right", although currently I am a big fan of both Ultra Recall (
http://www.ultrarecall.com/) and nevf's excellent Surfulater. Both good in very different ways.
Having said all that, the program I am using more than any other in recent months has taken me by surprise — because I didn't install it either as a notetaker or as a data capture tool. It's Clipcache, one of many clipboard enhancers.
Gradually, I realised how easy it was to capture and organise data in Clipcache, and how adding a note was simply a matter of hitting Ctrl+n and typing. Like all Clipboard enhancers, all you need to do to capture other data (including web snippets) is hit ctrl+c. It handles HTML well. And the new version (3, still in beta -
http://www.xrayz.co.uk/forum/) is based on a robust SQL database engine, which cures what some see as a weakness in version 2. I am using version 3. Search is quick and efficient. Layout is based on the traditional and familiar three panel layout - tree, list, preview. Screenshots for version 2 here:
http://www.xrayz.co.uk/clipcache/?page=screenshotsIf you want something for quick notes, web snippets and basic data organisation, it's efficient. Perhaps not for heavy-duty use — for long-term stuff or major projects I'm still likely to put large buckets of data into either Ultra Recall or Surfulater (can't decide between them yet). But for "miscellaneous" stuff or casual use, Clipcache has merit.