NoteTaker 2003

Rating:
Summary: This is beta software
Review: Whenever I run NoteTaker I run into all kinds of glitches, some small and some large. For example, I created a simple notebook and decided to export it to the web. The export panel let me choose where to save the HTML version, but it actually saved it under a different name. When I finally found it and viewed the HTML in Safari it looked OK but when I used Explorer, all of the pages were empty. It's this way for most features - glaring bugs that you would think some basic testing would expose. NoteTaker is lacking the polish that I expect from commercial software, especially at the price they're asking.

NoteTaker also gets bogged down as your Notebooks grow in size. Someone sent me a notebook that has about a megabyte of data in it and it took about a minute for NoteTaker to open it. Somehow I waited that long - I was certain the app had frozen.

AquaMinds has announced they're porting NoteTaker to Windows. That doesn't much benefit us Mac users, and the time and energy they could be investing in fixing bugs in the existing product is instead being poured into the port.

NoteTaker is an offshoot of an application called "NoteBook," originally written for the NeXT Computer. The original NoteBook is also available for the Mac, from a company called Circus Ponies Software. Both NoteBook and NoteTaker have a very similar feature set - definitely compare the two before making a purchase decision. Both companies offer 30-day test drives.

Rating:
Summary: This is beta software
Review: Whenever I run NoteTaker I run into all kinds of glitches, some small and some large. For example, I created a simple notebook and decided to export it to the web. The export panel let me choose where to save the HTML version, but it actually saved it under a different name. When I finally found it and viewed the HTML in Safari it looked OK but when I used Explorer, all of the pages were empty. It's this way for most features - glaring bugs that you would think some basic testing would expose. NoteTaker is lacking the polish that I expect from commercial software, especially at the price they're asking.

NoteTaker also gets bogged down as your Notebooks grow in size. Someone sent me a notebook that has about a megabyte of data in it and it took about a minute for NoteTaker to open it. Somehow I waited that long - I was certain the app had frozen.

AquaMinds has announced they're porting NoteTaker to Windows. That doesn't much benefit us Mac users, and the time and energy they could be investing in fixing bugs in the existing product is instead being poured into the port.

NoteTaker is an offshoot of an application called "NoteBook," originally written for the NeXT Computer. The original NoteBook is also available for the Mac, from a company called Circus Ponies Software. Both NoteBook and NoteTaker have a very similar feature set - definitely compare the two before making a purchase decision. Both companies offer 30-day test drives.

Rating:
Summary: The Killer App Get's Better
Review: Wow! This app get's better and better all the time. Virtually every issue has been addressed and fixed in this release and it feels rock solid. NoteTaker has become indespensible for me, I live in this program on a daily basis to keep track of my notes, project plans, database schemas, flow and wireframe diagrams, reference materials, work logs, projects for the kids and all kinds of other things. I used to use the Finder as a kind of storage cabinet, but NoteTaker really helps to tie everything together in a way that was not possible before.

Frequently, I hear comparisons being made between NoteTaker and "Scrapbook" manager programs, such as the very good DevonThink or Alepin which are like the drawer that you put everything in that doesn't need it's own notebook. Scrapbook managers also work well as companions to NoteTaker. But NoteTaker isn't a scrapbook manager. Sometimes you hear that it's an outliner, but it's really not. It's a digital notebook and that's the differece. Yeah, it's structure might look like an outliner, but that's just a means of helping organize the information in the notebook. It also has no problems importing outliner data from programs such as OmniOutliner, which I also use (though I admit I have been using it less since NoteTaker came out in January).

I have notebooks now that are very large and this version is much faster then previous releases, especially when saving.

I find that NoteTaker makes very good use of the screen real estate and I happen to like having the sprial and the tabs. When people see NoteTaker on my computer, they immediately get a sense of what the program is for.

Another cool thing is the web deployed notebooks. I can take project/meeting notes along with todo's and post them for my staff to access right off my TiBook. Very handy.

There aren't many apps that I want to give 10 stars (out of the available 5), but NoteTaker is certainly one of those few that have made a difference in how I work. I think some people will "get it" and others will still use the Finder as a filing cabinet. For me, NoteTaker is definitely in the killer app category.

Rating:
Summary: The Killer App Get's Better
Review: Wow! This app get's better and better all the time. Virtually every issue has been addressed and fixed in this release and it feels rock solid. NoteTaker has become indespensible for me, I live in this program on a daily basis to keep track of my notes, project plans, database schemas, flow and wireframe diagrams, reference materials, work logs, projects for the kids and all kinds of other things. I used to use the Finder as a kind of storage cabinet, but NoteTaker really helps to tie everything together in a way that was not possible before.

Frequently, I hear comparisons being made between NoteTaker and "Scrapbook" manager programs, such as the very good DevonThink or Alepin which are like the drawer that you put everything in that doesn't need it's own notebook. Scrapbook managers also work well as companions to NoteTaker. But NoteTaker isn't a scrapbook manager. Sometimes you hear that it's an outliner, but it's really not. It's a digital notebook and that's the differece. Yeah, it's structure might look like an outliner, but that's just a means of helping organize the information in the notebook. It also has no problems importing outliner data from programs such as OmniOutliner, which I also use (though I admit I have been using it less since NoteTaker came out in January).

I have notebooks now that are very large and this version is much faster then previous releases, especially when saving.

I find that NoteTaker makes very good use of the screen real estate and I happen to like having the sprial and the tabs. When people see NoteTaker on my computer, they immediately get a sense of what the program is for.

Another cool thing is the web deployed notebooks. I can take project/meeting notes along with todo's and post them for my staff to access right off my TiBook. Very handy.

There aren't many apps that I want to give 10 stars (out of the available 5), but NoteTaker is certainly one of those few that have made a difference in how I work. I think some people will "get it" and others will still use the Finder as a filing cabinet. For me, NoteTaker is definitely in the killer app category.