DON'S FREEWARE CORNER - NOV 2020

FEATURES I WOULD LIKE IN A NOTE-TAKING PROGRAM

Don's Freeware Corner articles are printed in the UTAH VALLEY TECHNOLOGY AND GENEALOGY GROUP (UVTAGG) Newsletter TAGGology each month and are posted on his Class Notes Page https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html where there may be corrections and updates.

FEATURES I WOULD LIKE IN A NOTE-TAKING PROGRAM

©2020 Donald R. Snow - Last updated 2020-11-10.

 

NOTE-TAKING PROGRAMS

There are many note-taking programs, many free and others commercial with free versions to help you decide.  Some are completely free, including Open Source programs.  For years I have been using the program Evernote.  I used the free version for a couple of years and the paid version for the past 8-10 years, since I wanted the additional features.  But recently, Evernote has been "updated" and now is so different that it's a problem and you can't even see the entire title of your notes nor your notebooks.  And it runs slower and hangs up often and they have dropped local notebooks which we used to use for our private data.  There are additional problems that I won't go into here.  So now I need to decide if I want to continue paying the high annual price or switch programs.  I've begun to compile a list of other note programs and their websites and this Freeware Corner article is the result. 

FEATURES I WOULD LIKE IN A NOTE PROGRAM

Here are some things I would like in a note-taking program.

1 - Free version that I can use as long as I want, before I decide if I want to pay for the premium version

2 - Stand-alone app so it can be used on my Windows 10 computer and mobile devices without being connected to the internet.

3 - Ability to update (synchronize is the jargon term) so it will update the notes on each of my devices when it detects an internet connection

4 - Ability to have local notes that don't go over the internet, so I can keep my personal data without worrying about losing it as it updates on my over devices

5 - Ability to form notes by typing, drag-and-dropping other files such as docs, pdfs, images, and audio clips

6 - Ability to capture and store webpages; not necessarily the entire website, but only pages I am interested in

7 - Good search routines so I can find things in my notes, e.g. a way to search for an exact expression like you can with Google by using quote marks; also a way to do global replacement of an item in every note

  8 - Ability to include tags as keywords or else a place for keywords to help in searching and bringing up collections of notes

9 - Ability to export notes in several formats, e.g. text files and html files, though html files could be done in other ways by copying the text

10 - Ability to export pdfs and other files stored in a note

11 - Ability to change fonts and sizes in the notes and in the headings of the program

12 -  Ability to include a table such as a spreadsheet, but it doesn't have to include working like a spreadsheet

Well, there's more, but that's quite a list.  Evernote used to do many, but not all, of these.

LIST OF PROGRAMS

To consider note-taking program I have been making a list with links to their webpages and here it is.  Did you ever think there were so many note-taking programs?  This list is alpabetical and some of these programs are old and may not work well.  I haven't investigated these all yet.  I may end up using more than one program; for example, one to do text notes and another to do webpages, etc.   I'll keep you posted.  In the meantime, I 'll probably keep on using the crippled Evernote.  I'm not recommending any of these, since I don't know which are any good yet.

AllMyNotes -- https://allmynotes.vladonai.com/
  Aml Pages Notes -- http://www.amlpages.com/about.shtml
AM-Notebook -- https://www.aignes.com/notebook.htm 
Beyondpad -- https://www.beyondpad.com/
BoostNote -- https://boostnote.io/ 
CintaNotes -- http://cintanotes.com/ 
Dropbox Paper -- https://www.dropbox.com/paper
Evermpte -- https://evernote.com/ 
GloboNote -- https://globonote.info/download 
Google Keep -- https://keep.google.com/u/0/
KeepNote -- http://keepnote.org/ 
KeyNote -- https://keynote.en.softonic.com/ 
NoteLedge -- https://www.kdanmobile.com/noteledge 
NoteCase Pro -- https://www.notecasepro.com/
NoteTab Light -- https://www.notetab.com/notetab-light 
Notion -- https://www.notion.so/ 
OneNote -- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/onenote/digital-note-taking-app?ms.url=onenotecom&rtc=1 
Org-Mode -- https://orgmode.org/ 
Penzu -- https://penzu.com/ 
Quip -- https://quip.com/blog/desktop
ResophNotes -- https://www.resoph.com/ResophNotes/Welcome.html 
SilverNote -- http://silvernote.findmysoft.com/
SimpleNote -- https://simplenote.com/ 
Standard Notes -- https://standardnotes.org/ 
SynapBook -- https://synapbook.com/ 
Tiddlywiki -- https://tiddlywiki.com/ 
Tomboy -- https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Tomboy 
TreePad Lite -- https://treepad.com/ 
Webasyst -- https://www.webasyst.com/store/app/stickies/ 
WikidPad -- http://wikidpad.sourceforge.net/ 
Wiz Note -- https://www.wiz.cn/ 
Zim -- https://zim-wiki.org/ 
Zoho Notebook -- https://www.zoho.com/notebook/

CONCLUSIONS

As you can see there is a plethora of note-taking programs, since that's such an important part of using a computer.  There are reviews of some of these programs online and a next step will be to read the reviews.  Here is the link to a Wikipedia article comparing some of these and listing some of their features --  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_note-taking_software .  There's a lot left to do to figure out what to do, but I'll keep you posted.  And, if you have recommendations for me, please  let me know. ============================================