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General brainstorming for Note-taking software
vegas:
This thread will never die! I WILL NOT LET IT! ;D Too much to talk about here. I've had to catch up on many threads of 1000+ posts on FatWallet, HardForum, HydrogenAudio, and others - I think this one is just getting going! (sure hope so anyways, as I see this the most important piece of software to have on a PC and yet someone has yet to get it right) I am currently using both WinOrganizer & Keynote, I hesitate to move fully back to Keynote as I have alot of tables that cannot be imported. Also, with Keynote, you cannot print an individual note, you have to export it to another program like Word first. I've also tried TexNotes, but damn that thing is so bloated and clunky, taking up way to much space as a program leaving too little for actual information. I find Surfulator to be too much of a Web info collecting utility than a note storing application and it too is a bit sluggish (just not snappy in speed). Evernote just does not offer the ability to organize information in a useful way. The upcoming rewrite of MyBase looks most promising, but still they have said this will not support tabs within files, which is one of the nicest features about Keynote. I could go on and into more depth, but I am just an overall unsatisfied person with this category of software ATM. :) Oh, and WinOrganizer, they were on the right path 3-4 years ago, but all forward moving development has been basically non-existent.
superboyac:
OK! I guess this is not the end of the thread! I said that because I thought that all of the noteworthy programs out there had been mentioned already and the features they had or wished they had had been discussed. I felt that a lot of things were being repeated, and also that the discussion was tending to veer off-topic (partly due to the fact that most of the relevant information had already been discussed).
But it looks like there's much more to talk about here, so let's continue. I was going to do a short little summary of the things we've discussed, in a sort of mini-review, but maybe I'll hold off on that. Besides, I'm working on another review right now, so there's still a lot of time for the next review.
superboyac:
Black Hole Organizer has had RTF for ages, and seems to have a good deal of "mind share." It looks more like a database for text scraps than an outliner.
--- End quote ---
I'd like to try this out, but they have no trial version. And to be honest, it doesn't look like it offers anything special. But that's an empty statement because you really have to just get your hands on these things to know for sure.
longrun:
I don't think this discussion can be complete without mentioning the venerable but incredibly expensive Info Select from Micro Logic (miclog.com), which I believe pioneered this category. IS began under DOS as Tornado Notes, and has evolved into a very useful but somewhat bloated program. I've stuck with it for two reasons: I have so much information stored in it (used it continously since ~1985), and some features are so intuitive (type N for new note, G for get, i.e., search).
This category is different from most in that switching among programs isn't just a matter of installing a new one; importing data usefully is often impossible.
Other programs to try include TreePad (various flavors including free) and GemX's TexNotes/TexNotes Pro and do-Organizer (full-fledged PIM with notes).
superboyac:
I don't think this discussion can be complete without mentioning the venerable but incredibly expensive Info Select from Micro Logic (miclog.com), which I believe pioneered this category. IS began under DOS as Tornado Notes, and has evolved into a very useful but somewhat bloated program. I've stuck with it for two reasons: I have so much information stored in it (used it continously since ~1985), and some features are so intuitive (type N for new note, G for get, i.e., search).
This category is different from most in that switching among programs isn't just a matter of installing a new one; importing data usefully is often impossible.
Other programs to try include TreePad (various flavors including free) and GemX's TexNotes/TexNotes Pro and do-Organizer (full-fledged PIM with notes).
--- End quote ---
Actually, we have discussed InfoSelect here. I think most of us have ruled it out of the discussion because we're trying to limit this topic to just note-taking utilities. As you mentioned, IS has become bloated to include several other features. More importantly, I think IS is just too expensive to be taken seriously here among the other programs. Even if it were the best program to use in this case (which it isn't), it is so expensive that most people still wouldn't use it. And as nevf mentioned, there isn't even a trial version of the program for people to get familiar with.
Treepad is a program that hasn't been discussed here yet. I've tried Treepad out once, and I also tried out GemX's TexNotes. both of these are very similar programs. They are highly polished and they do a lot of things, besides notetaking. I don't think either of them offer the power for notetaking and information capturing that the top 3 programs I mentioned earlier offer. Specifically, they both operate on the traditional tree-heirarchy, which is nothing special. But they do have a lot of features. I might give the two programs another test run just to refresh my memory.
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