Take note!
Evernote
Note taking: the answer 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’ve wasted weeks of real time testing various alternatives.
When you’re looking for note-taking software you’re invariably referred to PIMs – Personal Information Managers – but they tend to be too obsessed with email, contact management and time management.
What I want is an information manager. A repository for all my notes, plans, dreams and mountains of reference data. If it’s also a PIM I can live with it, but I use Gmail, my iPhone 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 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 halfway round the world has 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.
- A program which can be used with Windows, a Mac, and 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. 60 day free trial and a very reasonable price for use on 2 PCs. - Tiddlywiki
Wikis are very good for linked reference data. Tiddlywiki is the most suitable for portability. The lack of WYSIWYG editing makes it awkward for constantly changing files like To Do lists. Very good though, and free! 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 is totally OS agnostic and will run in any browser. - TreeDBNotes
Very good, but if I’m paying I believe MS One Note is 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 IS’s cavalier attitude to users and MicroLogic’s extortionate prices. The program is buggy 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, IS’s data search core function is outstanding. - 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. Windows only and only one developer who may get run over by a bus. Perish the thought that he should come to an untimely “stickie” end! - The Winner! Evernote
I tried Evernote 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 over 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 from anything else I’ve seen, so it pays to get a grasp of how it works before jumping to conclusions. A good start is to press F1 to browse the online help and then look at the keyboard shortcuts file in the Help Menu.
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).
- If you wish Evernote can be used as a web based application like Google Mail; a normal local application like Outlook; or, 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 I just click the Synchro button and it updates all changes immediately. When I boot up my laptop it syncs immediately.
- Searching for text in notes is very fast.
- Evernote is available as a Windows or Mac local application, but you can also use it online in a browser with Linux. You can access your notes from any web connected computer on the planet. It has add-ons for Internet Explorer and for Firefox which enable you to send data directly from a web page to a new Note.
- You can use it in your iPhone, Palm Pre or Blackberry.
- Notes can be created and edited using the keyboard or handwriting. You can add web pages, images, copied text and pdf files. With the Pro version you can add any type of file, including MS Office documents. You can then open, edit and save those documents on any computer with MS Office installed and they’re synchronized with the other Evernote data.
- For Microsoft Office documents – in which the text isn’t directly searchable by Evernote – I’ve found the free 2GB of online storage available with a synchronizable DropBox account to be more useful.
- 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.
- An example: your friend Egbert is a member of your squash club, he also owns your favourite restaurant and he’s your child’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 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, and a small ad in the lower left corner of your window. No big deal although 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.
Editor’s note:
I’ve created a keyboard shortcuts cheatsheet for Evernote which you can get as a PDF file on my website by clicking right here.
Or if you prefer an Excel file, which is a much smaller file size for download, click here.
James Roe:
I am blessed with a registered version of InfoSelect 6 which never expires.
I would consider switching but how can I transfer the mounds of data I have?
Jim
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15 April 2009, 5:57 ammistywindow:
Hello Jim,
I’ve been using IS V6 too. Tried IS 2007 — didn’t find it worth the upgrade price.
As far as I know the only way to export IS notes is to copy & paste individual items or you can go to Export in the File Menu and export the whole .wd2 file (or complete trees or individual files) to .txt or .rtf files.
I don’t know about IS emails and databases because I’ve never used them.
Life wasn’t meant to be easy.
You can send data to your Evernote account via email or a mobile phone.
15 April 2009, 6:14 amChaim Goodman:
I’ve been using Infoselect for many years as well. The main feature that has kept me with Infoselect is the ease and incredible speed of the search algorithm. Can you please compare this specific area between Evernote and Infoselect; are the searches really as fast and easy in Evernote when trying to find a random note?
Thanks!
Chaim
27 April 2009, 4:44 ammistywindow:
Sorry about the delay Chaim. I’ve been deliberating this. Short answer: I don’t know!
I don’t yet have enough notes to give an informed opinion.
The process is different and for an IS user takes some getting used to.
Good points:
1. Before a search you can filter by Notebooks, Attributes and Tags. Or not.
2. a la Google you can use quotes to specify a search phrase.
3. The search box defaults to a boolean AND search. i.e. It looks for all notes containing all search words.
4. To change to an OR search, prepend any: to the search terms.
To reduce scrolling, it helps to have all notes set to “collapsed” when searching, because all relevant notes are shown in the main window. (View Menu » Collapse all)
Detailed info about search syntax here:
http://www.evernote.com/about/developer/api/evernote-api.htm#_Toc200272595
I intend to investigate Evernote in depth over the next few days and I’ll post back.
28 April 2009, 9:40 amJohn MacGibbon:
I’ve been a dedicated InfoSelect user since it was a DOS program called Tornado. But I have problems with synchronising it among three computers. Evernote looks like it would fit the bill – except – that it appears not to work in Linux. So I can’t use it with my Asus eee. Pity.
I see it can work with Firefox – maybe that’s a way to get some use out of it in Linux.
What I’ve been doing to make information available to all my computers is, after I put stuff on InfoSelect, I copy important stuff into Gmail messages to myself. Clunky, but it works. And Google’s searching is much better than InfoSelect’s.
However, you mention that it can
Incidentally my version of InfoSelect (v4) works ok on my eee with the help of Wine.
29 April 2009, 10:19 pmmistywindow:
1. You can use Evernote with Linux without Wine, but web only, so you only have access to your data when you have an Internet connection.
Installing Evernote under Wine:
http://abbysays.wordpress.com/2008/05/24/how-to-install-evernote-30-on-ubuntu/
2. I installed XP on my eee PC to make it easier to sync with my other two PCs. (Networking and synchronizing data with Linux drove me back to Windows.)
3. Ended up giving the eee PC to one of my granddaughters (Laura’s a budding writer) because the keyboard was too small for me. I now have an HP netbook, a blown IT budget, and a very happy granddaughter.
4. I’ve run IS v6 and IS 2007 with Wine. Mostly successful with basic functions although with V6 the font menu was corrupted. Transporter didn’t work which isn’t surprising.
5. An excellent open source program for Linux, very similar to MS One Note is BasKet Note Pads. They’re threatening to release a Windows version at some stage. See here:
30 April 2009, 5:32 amhttp://basket.kde.org/version2.php
Ron Chusid:
I still keep IS around since I have a registered version but I primarily use Ecco Pro, which you might add to the above list. Ecco Pro is overkill for just notes, but it is very powerful for those who want to also have outlining and PIM functions. One key reason to consider it, even if it is more than you need is that, since they stopped selling the program, it has been posted on line for free. There are also add on programs available to improve some of the functions even more. It also synchronizes with other computers and synchronizes very well with the Palm. Synchronization methods include writing small files with changes which can be imported to other computers running Ecco, but the main way I do it is over WiFi to sync my notebook and desktop computers. I run it under Windows, and don’t know if it can be run on anything else.
1 May 2009, 6:18 amAlan Vallis:
I looked at Ecco Pro Ron, but because development stopped in 1997 and because it has not been released to open source I didn’t feel it was something I could recommend to users.
Seems to be a dog-in-the-manger attitude on the part of the copyright holders.
I know that, like Info Select, Ecco Pro has a dedicated following but my biggest gripe about IS is the lack of interest on the part of its developers. That situation seems much worse with Ecco Pro. 12 years on hold is a long time.
1 May 2009, 6:50 amAlan Vallis:
@ Chaim
I’m more familiar with searching Evernote now. It’s just as easy as it is with Info Select. Now that I’m accustomed to the switch I prefer Evernote’s search facility over IS’s.
You have a visual indication of the number of search matches in the Note List Panel (F10 to make it visible), or you can judge the number of hits from the relative length of the scroll slider to the right of the Panel(s).
As mentioned in a previous comment, multiple search terms without quotation marks are treated as boolean AND searches. (in IS V6 such strings are treated as phrases) To change that to a boolean OR search, prepend any: to the search terms.
You can also search for specific phrases between quotes à la Google.
I haven’t found a reference to boolean NOT searches, but using – before a search term seems to work. As in :
Windows -Vista
HTH
1 May 2009, 5:09 pmJohn MacGibbon:
I’m sold on Evernote after spending the weekend with it. I even went right through my big InfoSelect database and transferred 500 notes that I thought would be worth having in Evernote. I ignored over 1000 InfoSelect notes that I was unlikely to ever want to see again.
It was fairly quick and easy. Put the cursor in an InfoSelect note, hit Ctrl-A to select the text. Then hit Windows-A to send the text to Evernote.
After putting all these notes on my laptop’s Evernote on my laptop they were automatically sent up to the ‘cloud’, where they now are available to my Linux eee. (I hope a full Linux version of Evernote comes out soon.)
When I start up my office desktop tomorrow, it will automatically be updated with all my new Evernotes, dragged down from the cloud.
I like the way it does graphics as well as text. One thing I did was go to a website I created, which is about to have a major overhaul. I wanted to have a record of exactly what it looks like now, so I sent screengrabs of all its pages to Evernote. I did it as screengrabs rather than the ‘normal’ Evernote copying of web pages, because the ‘normal’ method doesn’t preserve the exact screen layout.
I’ll keep InfoSelect on my computer as a legacy database – just in case I want to drag some really obscure detail out of my past – but I can’t see it being used often.
3 May 2009, 8:32 pmChaim:
Thanks very much for the useful info comparing Evernote to Infoselect!
4 May 2009, 8:53 amAlan Vallis:
I’ve created a keyboard shortcuts cheatsheet for Evernote which you can get on my website as a PDF file here:
http://www.mistywindow.com/software/evernote_shortcuts.pdf
or, if you prefer an Excel file:
http://www.mistywindow.com/software/evernote_shortcuts.xlsx
The Excel file is in Office 2007 format. 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:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101686761033.aspx
To reduce the load on my server, I’d rather not convert it to the old format – files in the new format are ½ the size of the older ones.
I’m not sure how the font families (I’ve used Calibri & Albertus Medium) and font sizes will pan out on all computers if you use the Excel file. The PDF file should be fine on all computers.
HTH
4 May 2009, 9:04 amJohn MacGibbon:
I’ve just sent this to the Evernote support people:
I’ve been testing Evernote as an alternative to InfoSelect. But one thing really bugs me about Evernote – I can’t do really quick searching like I can in InfoSelect. In InfoSelect I just hit ‘G’ (for ‘get’) and straight away my cursor is in the search box ready to type.
In theory F3 does the same in Evernote – except that it doesn’t always. Right now it’s taking me to further instances of the search string used in my last post search. Why can’t you have a hotkey that goes to the search entry box and nothing but the search entry box! When it behaves as it is doing right now, I have to take my hands off the keyboard and navigate to the search entry box with my mouse. That slows me down and is really aggravating.
4 May 2009, 12:01 pmAlan Vallis:
I’ve dug a little deeper in the cheatsheet.
As you’ve discovered John, F3 takes you to the Search box. Subsequent taps of F3 cycle you through the search results.
In this state, tap F6 (or Ctrl + F) to go to the Search box to overwrite the previous search string.
5 May 2009, 2:44 pmJohn MacGibbon:
The F6 follow-up if F3 doesn’t work is better than nothing, but it would be much better if Evernote provided a single hot key that takes you to a blank search box that’s ready for you to start typing in – every time.
Another wee niggle: perhaps I’m looking in the wrong place, but I can’t see anywhere in Evernote where I can change the font defaults. In particular I’d like to be able to stop it displaying plain text as Courier. I’d like to set plain text to display the same as other text. This is an issue when I copy from plain text emails, or if I copy from a website and use PureText to paste it into Evernote as plain text, to get rid of the graphic elements. I just discovered there’s a shortcut of Ctrl-spacebar that will convert plain text to the normal default, but I’d like to kill Courier before it ever appears.
Other than these two issues, I remain a big fan of Evernote. Every so often I come across a new application that gets me quite exercised and wanting to tell everyone about it. This is one of them. I must admit though, I get a bit of a blank look from some people – for them Evernote is an answer to a need they haven’t felt. For me though, it carries on a way of working I’ve had for years through InfoSelect. It adds considerably to what InfoSelect gave me and I’m sure there are lots of new possibilities yet to dawn on me. It’s clear that where I’ll move to with Evernote will demand a paid subscription to cope with higher data volume, and I think I’ll pay up today.
I’m particularly enjoying having all my Evernotes transferred automatically from one Windows computer to another so my information is always there for me. Hopefully they’ll release an Evernote client for Linux, but in the meantime I can at least get at it the data on my Asus Eee through my browser.
8 May 2009, 9:48 amAjay Chadha:
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22 July 2009, 9:54 amJohn MacGibbon:
Have you checked out the heavily revised version 3.5?
I have and I’m heavily unimpressed. The titles of items that come up when you do a search have been replaced by a series of graphic representations of the notes, in little boxes. That is actually useful if the notes are pictures, but for notes are in text form, it’s hopeless – the little boxes are too small for the text to be readable.
As well as that, the performance is much slower than in version 3.1. In fact on the computer I’ve trialled version 3.5 on, a P4-2800, performance was so bad that Evernote was unuseable.
Fortunately version 3.5 gets installed separately and you don’t lose version 3.1. Both work with the same database. But what guarantees are there that some time in the future the Evernote database will only work with versions 3.5 or later? That would be disastrous from my point of view, because text notes are likely to always be the main thing I want to store – and easily access – on Evernote.
Accessing text is the real advantage of Evernote as far as I’m concerned. For graphics there are other services like Flickr and Picasa that let you combine offline and online storage.
28 February 2010, 2:29 pm