Nigel -

I'll look out for the 60-day trial version of OneNote over here, too. Thanks for the other suggestions.

Derek

Francis -

Thanks for reminding me that a decent text-editor kept open all the time will also do a good job of storing random notes, ideas, etc.

One added thought: it's useful in that case if they can be minimized to the system tray rather than the taskbar to avoid clutter while working. Where programs can't achieve this on their own there are third-party programs to do it for them.

Derek

Steve -

This does look interesting, and I've added it to my list to try out. Thanks everyone for being so helpful. With this array of software recommendations there should be something to please anyone who is not happy with his or her current methods of recording random thoughts, notes, ideas, etc. quickly and without disturbing an existing train of thought too much.

Derek

I use OneNote 2003 on my personal computers -- not at the office (the boss has approved purchasing a copy and the ON license allows installation on only two computers). I tried to get a copy of the beta for 2007 through purchasing a CD from Microsoft, but had trouble ordering. It is too big a file to download via dialup. Anyway, I'm very eager to get my hands on ON 2007 and will be purchasing it as soon as it is available. I think that it will prove to be an indispensible piece of software, ironically filling two needs that fall on either end of the information management spectrum. 1. Quick capture of notes and ideas; and 2. Collection and management of all the information for specific projects.

Steve Z.

Graham

Sorry, I missed your earlier note. I don't use Outlook or Zoot so can't say whether what you say below will work. But everything else about Quick Notes Plus is pretty good so, yes, I'm sure it's as you/they describe it.

Since I'm pitching again for QNP (really, no connection with the company...), one warning. QNP notes can be hidden. In my experience, and I haven't talked to the developers about this, this slows down my machine, makes it slightly sluggish, and so isn't a great idea. But this may be because I've got hundreds of notes on my desktop... In every other way, it's fine. I've been using it for over a year. And as for memoleaf: I can't recommend it highly enough. Anyone with a palm should try it.

Graham Smith wrote:

A very valuable feature of QNP, is that it will also sync with Outlook Memos,
thus giving a route into Zoot and into non-palm PDAs, for example Phat Notes, which
runs on the Palm and Windows Mobile, will sync with Outlook Memos.

Or so I have just
read - I've not actually tried it.

Graham

I thought I'd use OneNote 2007 to keep spur-of-the-moment notes, but haven't. I think it's because when I go to review, say, a one-line note, it seems lost in the great expanse of a OneNote page.

I'm also not too keen on the way ON 2007's outline works. If this worked smoothly, it would good for organising a quick note. For this to work for me, I need keyboard shortcuts. In ON, I can expand but not collapse items from the keyboard. In any case, it's not intuitive, nothing like the keyboard shortcuts in NoteMap or WhizFolders.

Judging by the clunky outline function still in MS Word 2002 (though maybe it's got better in Word 2007?), MS is likely to take its own sweet time to sort this out.

Another beta problem: tags keep on repeating; I'll add one and find two when I search.

However, I am using ON 2007 and intend buying it when it goes on sale. I find it works well as a place to hold snapshots taken from graphic programs like MindManager or TimeMap. One click and pics are safely put away. And what's even better about this is that ON 2007 has inbuilt ocr and so turns any graphic with writing into searchable text. It's not perfect, but works well enough, doesn't add too many typos.

Group,

This might be a solution for the 'taking quick notes' issue:
http://softvoile.com/flashnote/

Dominik

Just wanted to update that the sticky notes app for Windows - Quick Notes Plus is now known as Notezilla - http://www.conceptworld.com/Notezilla

Thanks :)