looking for notetaking software

hi im lookin forward to taking notes with my new laptop when fall semester starts. im looking for something thats not too complicated and is windows compatible. thanks

 

any reason you're not using Word ?

 

I use OpenOffice/Word. But there is this thing you want to look at which is OneNote, which is still Word but designed for taking notes

 

what about abiword? it produces ms document formats and is simple to use. also can be used on a usb drive. =)

 

thanks for the input guys. i found evernote and its free if u download the basic version. the pro version makes use of tablet pc's cause u can actually write on the screen. its very user friendly i like it!

 

MS OneNote is the best! It's only like $40 and it's very much worth it.

 

Bethca OneNote is less than that in the student bookstore...

BTW, there's a free trial here.

 

MS onenote.....go get beta 2 of office and you get onenote for free....it is a 200mb download though

 

well, whatever you use, make sure it's compatible with what your professors / campus uses so that if you have to email a paper to the prof, it's in the correct format (which for 99.999%) of schools (and businesses) is Word.

afaik, you can't save .doc in OneNote

 

I tried Evernote, and for the most part I liked it. However, it's just not as expansive as One Note. I just turned to Word instead of paying for ON. If I want to print notes, that works much better.

 

I love using OneNote. Last semester (spring) was my first back in school in a few years, so note taking was a new thing for me in figuring out the best way possible to record things. I tried OneNote and it works great. Last semester I hand-wrote them and took them home and typed it all out (makes it easier for studying after printing, etc)...now I'm looking to take the laptop in and just do it directly to save time at home and save my hand in the process.

 

If I need to email something from OneNote to someone its as simple as copy-pasting the text to an email or document, so I think that's a pretty poor argument. OneNote is so much more flexible for notetaking than Word... I've done a year and a half with each and I would hate to have to go back to Word.

 

can you post some reasons why you say this?

 

ok guys im gonna give onenote a shot and compare with evernote. thanks for the input again!

 

Formatting is the big reason. Try making columns in Word quickly. Or inserting an image and resizing it so that it goes with a certain block of text. Or try to copy a text diagram in word. Just make mutliple textareas in onenote and move them around til it's just the way you like. I also like that I can use little flags to mark something as important or homework and have onenote give me a summary of all my homework at the end of the day. Word can't do any of that.

 

It might be useful for a Notetaking program but I still found just using any Word Processor (preferrably OpenOffice to make shortcuts etc.) to take notes is effective enough. And when there are diagrams I draw it out on my notepad and scan it into it. I use Rainlendar to mark important dates :/ The free way

 

that sounds much more like desktop publishing than notetaking

 

I'm with Dragon. I love the tabs and all that...makes organizing much easier in OneNote. Plus the search option is great and shows what tabs/chapters they're on. Simple features, yet very handy and powerful in my mind. I can't wait to use OneNote this fall again.

 

well yes, any form of notetaking with a laptop is superior to by hand. i rarely carry paper/pen, so most of my diagrams are text based or mspaint'd.

MadDog is absolutely right... the tabs are fantastic. When I was using word, I saved each days notes as an individual file, which caused problems. Keeping one massive file also causes problems. Tabs solves those problems.

 

Unless, of course, you are in say a Complex Variables or Partial Differential Eqn's course.

 

well, of course, there are some things that don't work out so well with the laptop notetaking... but for most classes which are not heavily mathematical, it works.