All paid versions and all better at some things than the others, but none that seem to do it all well.
Someday I'll find that perfect note-taker!

-J-Mac (December 13, 2007, 02:02 AM)

Would you care to share what are the relative weaknesses of each of these 3 ?

-PPLandry (December 13, 2007, 07:29 AM)

No time for me to compose a mini-review right now, but here are some of the things I like (or don't really like) in these three programs:

Evernote:

•   Great search capabilities, but not exactly intuitive, at least I don't feel it is.
•   No tables or spreadsheet capabilities - they claim you can drag & drop tables and spreadsheets into a note but I have had mixed success. I guess it depends on the complexity of the table or spreadsheet.
•   It does support about as many categories as you could ever want, but no tagging. The explanation from users on their forum is that Evernote's search powers are so good and that tags basically suck anyway. Matter of opinion, I imagine; I don't have to have tags but I do like them.
•   The "endless tape" format is pretty cool when you start using it, and can be useful if you have the time to play, but at times, if I'm in a hurry, the "tape" format can drive me nuts!
•   A weird thing here - they have built-in icons that you can assign to categories. Many users at their forum have been clamoring for years for them to allow adding your own icons, but they say that would be too difficult. I don't quite get that. Besides, you cannot see the icons on your notes - they don't show there. Only on the category list itself. I don't get that either! Either support category icons, or don't. This in-between position is pointless, IMO.

OneNote 2007:

•   Probably the one I use the most, but mainly just for clipping from the web or any application
•   I don't like using it much if I am writing a note. Maybe it's the individual text boxes - or "note containers", as MS calls them -that it creates each time I start typing. Not a problem with it - mainly just a personal preference.
•   The odd file format that results from clipping - I don't know what in the heck it is but it usually cannot be used to paste into other applications. That really annoys me.
•   If I want to mail a note from OneNote 2007 it attaches a proprietary file to the message and a link to download OneNote 2007.  I hate this!! If I'm sending a note to someone I want them to be able to read it - right away.  Not show them an advertisement for another Microsoft product! Alternatively you can have it add an attachment that will open a browser window. But it asks first if you want it to open in your default browser. Mine is Firefox and if I click "Yes" it instead opens another instance of Thunderbird - no idea why! Then it switches and opens an Internet Explorer window. Too much trouble to view a note if you ask me. But if you are using it solely for your own use and never plan to send a note to anyone you won't have to deal with that.
•   Good tagging support, but you cannot add your own - something that can defeat the purpose of icons, which IMO is to allow finding notes at a glance due to instantly recognizable icons. Being heavily involved with the PPC/Windows Mobile platform for five years I came to appreciate category icons. I always created my own from client companies' logos. Then if I looked at the calendar I could see where I would be traveling to and whom I would be meeting with in any upcoming week by just glancing at the icons on my calendar page. So I prefer that if a developer has category icons as a feature they should always allow users to create and use their own.

AM-Notebook:

•   This one is my personal favorite for writing notes.
•   Tables and spreadsheets are built-in and handled nicely. Calculations, formulae, & advanced expressions in the spreadsheets.
•   Full rich text, extensive formatting options, clips & templates; I like how it handles these better than the others - once again, mostly personal preference.
•   Alarm clock and reminders, tabbed interface, excellent search facility, encrypted notes, link or bookmark between notes, create a new note using clipboard contents
•   ToDo's, built-in calendar feature to schedule tasks/notes, contacts, install to USB flash drive
•   And a big plus in my opinion: an active user forum w/good developer participation.
•   Big drawback -- no web clipping/screen clipping feature. For that I have to use one of the other apps. Also, a smaller drawback - no category icons.
•   Bigger drawback yet - no category support at all... Aarrgh!  I use the folder structure as a kind of ersatz categorization tool, but that's just crappy. Lack of categories of any kind is definitely a large miss, IMO.

As I said, a lot of the pluses and minuses are simply my own personal preference.  Many love OneNote 2007 for its ease of use.  Likewise with Evernote for its power searching and cross-categorization.  (Search more than one category together to narrow down and pinpoint specific results. - its single best feature IMO).  I just prefer AM-Notebook because it's easy to use, looks great, has an easy-to-reach developer who is very supportive, and to me it's kind of like having a mini (VERY mini!) office suite always open in my tray, and a mini PIM at the same time.

Now I'm sure that fans of the others will start shooting at me, but as I said, I have paid versions of all three of those (And a few others as well - I'm a note freak!), and I like them all for different things.  Just stating my personal reasons for liking one more overall than the others!  So I will refuse to argue with anyone looking for a "Notes" fight!!   :P   ;D

Jim

Mouser:

Sorry for the non-informative post, but after using Screenshot Captor a few isolated times over the last few months, I decided to get the PDF manual and read up on everything it can do. All I can really say is that it blew me completely away! I had no clue just how powerful this application truly is!  Where do you get off creating such a program that blows all others like it out of the water?!

I've used SnagIt for a few years - I think since Version 5 or 6 - and since Version 8 was released I have had a lot of difficulties with it.  Techsmith's initial installer package for V. 8 was really wrecked and I don't know if my PC ever fully recovered from the resultant Windows Side-by-Side issues it caused.  (MS had released an auto-update in April of last year which caused this same problem for many developers who, rather than create new installer packages with MS Installer 3.0 when it was released, just took their existing MS Installer 2.X packages and imported them into V. 3.0 - big mistake with disastrous results for many users who installed with these packages).

I eventually got SnagIt working again after much repair, but lately it has had periods where it simply will not start. It's supposed to start with Windows and the correct processes show as running, but the app itself won't appear at all and worse - won't capture! Sometimes an immediate reboot helps, but mostly it doesn't. No errors show up in the Event Viewer nor in SnagIt's log file, so fixing the problem is not easy because you can't easily diagnose what's happening. I did discover - purely through trial and error - that placing SnagIt on the Windows XP Data Execution Prevention Exclusion list helped to reduce this behavior but it still occurs more often than not after a regular reboot of Windows.

Anyway, all that on SnagIt was just to lead up to me deciding to take SnagIt out of the Startup config and going full-bore with Screenshot Captor.  And since I had never really read up on Screenshot Captor, but had only used it occasionally when SnagIt was giving me problems, I took one good look at the interface window and Preferences dialog and knew I had a lot of reading to do so I could effectively use this program. And that's when the "Wows" started flowing from me uncontrollably!  Heck, my wife even came into my office to see "...what's wrong..." as she kept hearing Wow after Wow coming from there. I am certain it will take me some time to comprehend all the features and get used to the object handling features in particular, but do it I shall.  Because it's there, and I'm sure it will bring another wave of Wows when I master it!

So I just thought I would stop in here and comment.

Thanks!

Jim