
What triggered me to look at alternatives was the need to use OneNote across multiple PCs and my iPad. When a product called MobileNoter became available on the iPad a while back, which synced to my OneNote notepads via wifi or the cloud, that triggered my first iPad 1 purchase back in in 2010. Microsoft have come out with their own OneNote version on the iPad now, but haven’t yet bothered to create a Mac version. I needed to share OneNote across two laptops and the iPad (as well as using cloud as my backup), and you can do that by upgrading to OneNote 2010 (I started on 2003 then upgraded to 2007) and using shared cloud storage like Microsoft’s Skydrive, which gives you 25Gb of space for free. By the way you could use alternatives like Dropbox, Box.net or Sugarsync. I plan to do a comparison of these services in an upcoming article. The cost of the upgrade and the work involved in set up made me look around and revisit a product I’d tried back in 2009 called Evernote.
Evernote is a free or premium web based note taking service which they say helps you “remember everything“. I can capture notes, screen clippings or save any web page I like. I can snap photos (of white boards, flip charts, anything), save voice notes or video from my smart phone, android tablet or iPad. The key to Evernote’s success is that it is available as a web app, a Windows Desktop client, a Mac client, a BlackBerry app, an Android app, an iPhone app and on iPad too. There is no fiddly set up and sharing the right folders in Skydrive – I simply install the app on the particular device and log in to my account. Everything syncs across all devices and the web without you needing to think about it. For offline use, the free service allows sync of up to 500 notes. If you go Premium for $45 a year that becomes unlimited and you get a big increase in the amount you can upload each month and more. You’ll end up using Evernote as your repository for anything you need to remember for later.
The Windows and Mac client’s user interface has the list and detailed view “look” of an email client. It’s not as elegant as the Moleskin style OneNote, but it works. I can store notes in notebooks and stacks of notebooks. Each note is dated and time stamped and can even pick up the location where I’m creating it. Each note can be tagged. Tags are much more powerful than OneNote’s tabbed sections. Now I can tag the same note to appear in any section or topic I like. Searching is incredibly fast and starts as I type. Evernote does the OCR thing on scanned images reading text or even hand writing, but only for searching of that text, rather than the ability to copy it like in OneNote. I can also email content in to Evernote and send from Twitter – great for forwarding an email with attached documents that’s the starting point for a new project. Notebooks can be shared with another user or made public. Each note has an individual URL which you can use for sharing (and the other person doesn’t need to have an Evernote account). That’s a particularly cool feature for connecting Evernote to other services. I use Remember The Milk for personal task management. RTM allows me to add a relevant URL to a task. Now I can drop in an Evernote URL and connect alll of the relevant content and notes for that task or project directly from RTM.
In terms of actual writing, the note text editor isn’t anywhere near as powerful as OneNote, but I can choose font, highlight, indent, use bullet points, numbered lists, todos and create tables. It’s got what I need for more than 95% of the time, so I’ll live with those deficiencies and hope for future enhancements. That’s more than balanced by the extra flexibility, functions and access I get. Evernote has a large, growing and loyal user base, so the product is definitely evolving and the future looks solid. There is a knowledge base, good documentation, how to videos, forums, and premium users get online chat support and faster answers through the online ticket system. Conversion from OneNote is a breeze, provided you are on OneNote 2007 – there is a wizard which allows you to select which notebook and which sections to convert, and notes just get copied in to an Evernote notebook of the same name with the section converted to a tag and the creation date retained. I still have my chronological view, but I can add as many new tags as I want to make classification as easy or as complex as I need.
I’ve only been using Evernote for two weeks but I think it’s awesome! This is the way the personal cloud needs to work. I can store all of my writing, ideas, project documentation, anything and get to it securely in a choice of ways from whichever device I’m using or anywhere I can get web access through a browser. When I need to work offline on the PC or the iPad I can, and everything just syncs the next time I’m connected without me having to think about it. Apple’s iCloud covers the same concept across the Apple family of devices and iTunes, and it’s going to be big! You only have to look at the $1 billion investment Apple have made in their iDataCenter in Maiden, North Carolina. to see how serious they are about personal cloud. It covers 500,000 square feet and a second one is planned alongside! Evernote and iCloud show the way forward, but as well as access the vital component that so many software authors (coming out of the old world of conventional IT) don’t pay enough attention to is the user experience of set up. For the consumer or general business user, rather than the early adopter and geek, you need to to be able to sign up, download and just start using the service with all that technical stuff hidden underneath!
If you’re using Evernote, OneNote or some other personal cloud product, I’d love to hear from you.

(Cross-posted @ BizTwoZero)
I tried both Evernote and SpringPad (my review is here: http://2fatdads.com/2011/12/evernote-vs-springpad/) but in the end I went with EverNote. I never really was a OneNote user but I liked the idea.
I find Evernote works great on my laptop (Win 7) and well enough in my browser (Chrome beta on Linux). I can’t see to work with the tables I create in the Windows client when I’m editing the same note in the browser, but otherwise I prefer web over client hands-down.
The Android App is another story. I try and use for read-only access, but because I find editing a note never works out quite properly and I always have to in and fix it up when I get home.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for the input. Glad you like Evernote. I’ll go back and spend more time with the web. Interesting to hear your experience with the Android client, which I can’t try (BlackBerry and iPad myself). My wife and Kids use Android phones so I’ll have to get them to test it for me. The iPad client works great! The only issues so far I’ve had are to do with fonts on cut past, so occasionally I find myself pasting to the standard note app first to remove the formatting – otherwise I’m happy though. Cheers!
I have used Evernote for about a year. I wanted something that could give me access to my notes from an Android phone, Windows and Mac laptops and iPad. That way I can capture my thoughts wherever I am, scan in business cards (phone), jot down notes or minutes at meetings (iPad) and that’s it. They’re there for me on a laptop for distribution, sharing, incorporation into other docs, whatever.
It’s awesome, and little improvements are happening all the time.
Evernote is one of my “holy trinity” of personal cloud apps, all of which are (i) useable from all devices (ii) complement each other (iii) aesthetically excellent and (iv) free.
Evernote
Dropbox
Wunderlist