Not Notebook as in Computer… note book as in a thing you write your notes in.

Clicks Notebook Closed

Clicks Notebook

For along time I’ve used a sort of Moleskine ripoff from Clicks, its an A5 Lined Notebook with cream paper, black hardcover and an elastic that keeps it closed, they cost about R25 if you can find them. Haven’t seen the one I like lately, they always seem to only have the small pocket one… but I bought 5 the last time I saw them.

My biggest problem with using a paper based notebook is that its not searchable, you can’t copy and paste and you can’t go back and correct/add to an old existing entry.

This set off my search for a computer based note taking applications that made sense to me. My first try was a text file in a text editor, this worked but it still had a few issues and wasn’t as clean and simple as I would’ve liked. I then started using Google Notebook, which works great and is an awesome application, but the problem is that its not available offline which is a problem when you’re stuck somewhere without internet access and need to access your “thoughts”. The advantage of Google Notebook is that it works across machines and operating systems, which is a huge advantage.

I then started writing my own note taking application, but I lost interest after a while and never really finished it. While I had a TabletPC I used Microsoft OneNote which is a fantastic application and I loved using that, but its problem is that it uses alot of resources, especially when you consider I’m using it sort of like a text editor.

CintaNotes

The new application I’ve been trying out now is a little application called CintaNotes, its not fancy and sortof like a fancy text editor but so far its been one of the closest fit to what I’m looking for. I do wish they could add threaded notes to the app but otherwise it works pretty well.

If you have a suggestion for a note taking application that you like, or perhaps you have another solution let me know in the comments.