Author Topic: CintaNotes (Read 25,698 times)

PhilB66 · « **on:** March 31, 2009, 02:04 AM »

CintaNotes - A free, lightweight and user-friendly personal notes manager.

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Paul Keith · « **Reply #1 on:** March 31, 2009, 03:17 AM »

Yeah, I'm actually curious at the development of this thing but right now it's not there yet.

mzah8 · « **Reply #2 on:** April 21, 2009, 10:47 AM »

"Cinta" in Malay, pronounced chin-ta, means "love"

Haven't used it though, sorry.

40hz · « **Reply #3 on:** April 21, 2009, 03:15 PM »

I wanted to like it.

Nice concept, and rather pretty to look at. Unfortunately, it keeps locking up on my machine.

I currently use Flashnote ( http://softvoile.com/flashnote ) for quick & dirty note taking; and SEO Note ( http://www.seonote.info ) for my more structured note collections.

wraith808 · « **Reply #4 on:** April 21, 2009, 05:34 PM »

It doesn't lock up on my machine- I just didn't find myself using it. It's still on my portable drive, but I now have nothing stored in it

cyberdiva · « **Reply #5 on:** April 21, 2009, 06:21 PM »

Probably after seeing it mentioned somewhere in this site (CORRECTION: I saw it first in the Neat Net Tricks newsletter), I downloaded CintaNotes and started to use it. I soon put it in my Quick Launch bar, and I'm finding it quite useful. I've tried a bunch of programs for quick and dirty note-taking, including Zotero, list.it,, KeyNote, KeyNote-NF, CollectyCut, and AskSam. (The last two are commercial programs; the others are freeware.) I still use AskSam, but mostly for more extensive databases, not for quick note-taking. I also still use KeyNote-NF, but mostly for notes about one specific project rather than for notes in general. I kept waiting for CollectyCut to come out with a promised new version that would add needed features lacking in Version 2, but it hasn't happened. I'm not sure why I never really took to Zotero or list.it, but I simply found that I preferred CintaNotes. I'm not passionate about it, as I am about some programs, but I do like it better than the others for quick notes.

Jarius Elliott · « **Reply #6 on:** April 21, 2009, 10:14 PM »

Perhaps it's just my unsophisticated needs but I love this program. It is fast, reliable, the capture function is keyboard oriented which is right up my alley and the search function is lightning fast! I have been moving more and more to the simple side of the software landscape which includes more text-based offerings and Cintas does everything I need it to do. The only drawback is that there is only one file. No "Save As" functionality as of yet and I can see a future need for separate files if I do extensive research on various subjects. Oh and I forgot to mention I run it from my USB so I can use it in my workplace. Ongoing development appears to be good and the developers are considering a "Premium" version which I expect will include RTF functionality. Give it a try - no bells or whistles but as a basic information container it is an excellent alternative.

rgdot · « **Reply #7 on:** April 21, 2009, 10:52 PM »

I like it as well, especially the way one can add notes 'silently'

Alex.Jenter · « **Reply #8 on:** April 22, 2009, 03:27 AM »

Hi guys, I'm Alex, the author of CintaNotes. Thanks for giving my program a try, and I'm extremely glad that so many of you have found it useful.
CintaNotes is actively developed, and in case you want to discuss it in detail, or suggest a feature, I welcome you to the official forum on cintanotes.com.

Actually I'm writing here mostly because of the disturbing post of 40hz. I haven't received any reports about any lock-ups up to this point.
@40hz:
Could you please tell how exactly does the program "lock up"? I care a lot for the quality of the program and bugs such as this, in case they are confirmed, are treated with top priority. Thanks a lot!

mouser · « **Reply #9 on:** April 22, 2009, 03:34 AM »

welcome to the site Alex, glad to meet you.

40hz · « **Reply #10 on:** April 22, 2009, 12:09 PM »

Quote from: Alex.Jenter on April 22, 2009, 03:27 AM

Actually I'm writing here mostly because of the disturbing post of 40hz. I haven't received any reports about any lock-ups up to this point.
@40hz:
Could you please tell how exactly does the program "lock up"? I care a lot for the quality of the program and bugs such as this, in case they are confirmed, are treated with top priority. Thanks a lot!

Hi Alex! Welcome to DoCo.

Thanks for the interest!

I was using whatever release you were on back in December of last year.

I encountered sporadic lockups when scrolling through a long (70+ item) note list. My mouse would freeze and I'd need to kill CintaNotes in TaskManager to get it back. There was no particular pattern to it happening. It would work fine for a while, and then the problem would recur.

Unfortunately, I didn't do a lot of troubleshooting at the time. I could load it up again if it would help you. But since nobody else has reported this problem you may not want to bother. I've had a few other apps that perform clipboard-like functions exhibit similar (but not identical) behaviors.

FYI: I have some fairly odd things (multi-desktop and remote client network monitoring mostly) running in the background on the machine in question. These apps can - and do - cause occasional problems with explorer. So in the absence of any other reports, I'm sure it's an interaction with one of those rather than your app that's causing the problem. Otherwise you'd be hearing about it, right?

Gwen7 · « **Reply #11 on:** April 22, 2009, 05:46 PM »

Quote from: 40hz on April 22, 2009, 12:09 PM

I've tried a few other apps that perform clipboard-like functions exhibit similar (but not identical) behaviors.

Hey 40hz!

I'm using CintaNotes and I love it. No problems at all so far.

I have a few suggestions:

1. From some of the symtoms you've described, I'd be willing to bet your machine is running on an AMD chip that's overclocked. If so, try backing off on it a little bit.

2. If you're not overclocking, try checking your RAM to make sure all the modules are identical (latency, Manufacturer, etc.) Sometimes mixing RAM modules leads to odd behaviors.

3. If you have something called ShedkoBadges on your machine - get rid of it! It's known to cause all sorts of weird problems due to poor coding.

Good luck!

Alex.Jenter · « **Reply #12 on:** April 23, 2009, 06:29 AM »

Thanks for a warm welcome!

@40hz:
Well I guess then we can consider that the problem does not relate to CintaNotes. If it was on a notebase this small, it would have been reported by now. And anyway, December 2008 is like prehistoric time, CN is now more mature and actually there have been 4 new versions since

I agree with Gwen7 that overclocking can be a source of such behavior, also it could help to check if your CPU is not overheating. Best of luck tracking this down!

@Gwen7: Glad that you like CN! BTW yesterday I've released a stable preview of Beta M9 with tag autocomplete and some other improvements, you might want to take a look here.

Grorgy · « **Reply #13 on:** April 23, 2009, 07:52 AM »

I just tried it and I was wondering if you are aware it doesn't work with stardock's windowblinds? You can tell WB to ignore it and it works ok.

CleverCat · « **Reply #14 on:** April 23, 2009, 08:05 AM »

Ooh - thanks for the tip about Windowblinds Grorgy!

Alex.Jenter · « **Reply #15 on:** April 23, 2009, 11:10 AM »

@Grorgy:
No, I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for the info, I'll look what's going on there.

Alex.Jenter · « **Reply #16 on:** April 23, 2009, 12:16 PM »

@Grorgy:
Hmm, I installed WindowBlinds 6.3, and it seems to work fine with CN Beta M9 Preview. At least the "Diamond" and "Leo" themes. Which theme are you using? What exactly was not working?

Grorgy · « **Reply #17 on:** April 23, 2009, 01:01 PM »

I was using aero midnight, but i just tried with diamond as well, still no joy. The program starts ok apparently, can be minimised to tray but then when I click on the tray icon and new note it freezes up, just cinta notes, nothing else. Its using 50% of the processor while its locked open as well. Im using window blinds 6.4 and the CN beta from the link you provided above. Also I'm on an AMD 3800 X2 4gb of memory, running windows xp sp3 home. And its been sitting there locked all the time I've been typing this, and I will need to kill it thru task manager.

Just tried it on my laptop, does the same thing, its an intel celeron 1.5, with around 750 mb of memory

40hz · « **Reply #18 on:** April 24, 2009, 01:30 AM »

@Gwen7

Thanks for the input. You are correct that I'm running an Athlon64 chip, but it isn't overclocked. And Shedko Badges is not installed on my machine.

But you were onto something with the RAM.

I use Crucial brand memory almost exclusively. On this particular machine, I'm running 3x512 DIMMs. When I opened the case, I was surprised to discover that one of them was made by PNY. Apparently, we swapped out the third Crucial brand DIMM for one reason or another - probably to diagnose a client's machine - and never swapped it back.

This morning, I pulled the PNY brand DIMM and replaced it with one made by Crucial that is an exact match for the other two. Great move!

Two niggling issues on this machine have since disappeared completely, and the overall performance is noticeably better. Excellent call on your part. I wouldn't be surprised if the issue I had with CintaNotes would also be fixed by this.

Next time I have an oddball problem I'll have to remember to look at the hardware as well as the software.

Once again, thanks for your suggestions.

Alex.Jenter · « **Reply #19 on:** April 24, 2009, 02:31 PM »

@Grorgy:
Thanks for the info! On my machine with WindowBlinds there seems to be a problem with drawing a menu, but no freezes whatsoever

Window Blinds also has issues, see e.g. here: http://forums.miranda-im.org/showthread.php?t=17392
And CN uses the same principle with owner-drawn menu, so here we go.

@40hz:
Congrats