[AmericanPsych0]

I've been using Microsoft OneNote on my Windows machine for awhile, and with me gearing up to move everything over to my iBook, I was hoping anyone with personal experience dealing with note taking applications for the Mac could help me out. I've looked through close to a dozen and have pretty much narrowed to down to three.

• OmniOutliner: I played around with it briefly on a PowerBook at my local Apple Store, but it didn't quite pique my interest. A bit too simple, given I've been working on something with as many features as OneNote.
• iOrganize: This looks like it has something along the lines of OneNote's folder/file feature, which is probably the most important feature I'm looking for. Everything else is negotiable.
• DEVONthink: Definitely at the top of my list right now. It looks like it has all I'd need and then some. Is it much better than DEVONnote? There's a $20 difference in price and I wouldn't want to spend any more than I need to.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[ManOfSteal]

Have you played with Office:2004 for OS X at all?

Some of the new features are: Project Center, Notebook Layout View and Office Scrapbook. Project Center is kind of a one-stop view of e-mail, documents, contacts or appointments related to a project or task. Notebook Layout View takes on some capabilities found in Office OneNote 2003. The new feature focuses on easy note taking and, like OneNote, can take recorded audio, too. Scrapbook takes on other OneNote-like traits, providing another place for notes and also clippings.

Depending on how you use OneNote, Office:2004 may be all that you need to fulfill your needs...

[AmericanPsych0]

Originally posted by manofsteal:
Have you played with Office:2004 for OS X at all?

Some of the new features are: Project Center, Notebook Layout View and Office Scrapbook. Project Center is kind of a one-stop view of e-mail, documents, contacts or appointments related to a project or task. Notebook Layout View takes on some capabilities found in Office OneNote 2003. The new feature focuses on easy note taking and, like OneNote, can take recorded audio, too. Scrapbook takes on other OneNote-like traits, providing another place for notes and also clippings.

Depending on how you use OneNote, Office:2004 may be all that you need to fulfill your needs...

Does this Notebook view allow for use of any feature similar to the folder/file feature in OneNote? As I made mention in my first post, that's by far the most important feature in whatever note taking application I would use. Everything else is negotiable.

[SupahCoolX]

Go to www.microsoft.com/mac and download the Office Test Drive. It's a free 30-day demo that will let you see if Office 2004 does what you need it to.

[ManOfSteal]

Originally posted by AmericanPsych0:
Does this Notebook view allow for use of any feature similar to the folder/file feature in OneNote? As I made mention in my first post, that's by far the most important feature in whatever note taking application I would use. Everything else is negotiable.

It does the "file" thing fairly well/easily; however, I don't think you can do "folders"...at least, I haven't figured it out if you can...

[monkeybrain]

Check out MacJournal, it's possibly a bit simple compared to what you've been using but has organisational features in the form of journals (folders) and is very actively being developed. I've emailed the developer before and he's very responsive (this is one of the great things about Mac, brilliant and constantly improving shareware).

[torifile]

There's also NoteTaker from aquaminds. I don't know what OneNote is like, though. Most of these apps have trial versions, so there's no harm in giving 'em a whirl.

BTW, DevonThink is an absolutely killer app. Too much for what I need though I was so impressed I bought it anyway. I'm sure it could run circles around OneNote and nearly every other app out there. But it's not specifically for note-taking.

[ManOfSteal]

xPad 1.1 is a nice program as well...

[Millennium]

I'm not familiar with OneNote; what is this "folder/file" concept?

This said, when I was in college, I used OmniOutliner for my class notes and absolutely adored it. I'm not sure what extra features you're looking for, though.

[torifile]

Originally posted by Millennium:
I'm not familiar with OneNote; what is this "folder/file" concept?

This said, when I was in college, I used OmniOutliner for my class notes and absolutely adored it. I'm not sure what extra features you're looking for, though.

I used to swear by OO for a while but it's stagnated significantly. NoteTaker (and I suspect others) have the ability to display web pages in line, export to .doc format, generate HTML on the fly (with some pretty nifty javascript to boot). You can drop files (I don't know about folders) in line with your notes, etc. OO 3 will no doubt be spectacular if it's ever released. But who knows when that'll be :/

[AmericanPsych0]

Originally posted by Millennium:
I'm not familiar with OneNote; what is this "folder/file" concept?

Files and folders are used to organize your note pages by whatever you wish: subject in the case of school notes or whatever else you want. It's difficult to explain, so please refer to the images and captions below.


Folders can contain files and other folders within them, but not actual pages.


Files can only contain pages within them.

[cpac]

No offense psych0, but you've made a good choice to simplify your life by switching to a Mac - I'd take the opportunity to switch note-taking styles as well.

It seems to me that all this "one note" is doing is adding yet another layer of organization on top of a file/windowing system that can do the same thing better.

I just finished using OmniOutliner for three years of law school and a summer of bar prep, and I can tell you, it worked wonderfully. I'd have one document keeping my notes, a second with my case briefs and a third that was *the* outline from which I planned to study for my exams. OO was able to export it nicely to .rtf if I needed to share things with anyone, and I can say that while OO 2.0 is fabulous, they are currently working on version 3.0 which will be even more feature-rich.

On top of this you should realize that Tiger (10.4) will be released during the first half of next year at which point the system itself will have extremely fast word indexing and searching that will be able to look into text-based documents such as OO files.

So I guess I'm saying: take advantage of the system - use expose, multiple documents, the dock, and even (gasp!) a Folder in the finder to organize multiple documents that all pertain to a single class...

In short: simplify.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by AmericanPsych0:
Files and folders are used to organize your note pages by whatever you wish: subject in the case of school notes or whatever else you want. It's difficult to explain, so please refer to the images and captions below.

[images snipped; refer to original post]

Hmm. So it looks like the real issue here is the idea of organizing a file into multiple 'pages' of notes. The rest could easily be care of using the filesystem (Tiger's Spotlight will be particularly helpful here), but the multiple-pages-within-a-file idea is the real kicker; am I right?

[torifile]

Originally posted by AmericanPsych0:
Files and folders are used to organize your note pages by whatever you wish: subject in the case of school notes or whatever else you want. It's difficult to explain, so please refer to the images and captions below.

[snip - large image]
Folders can contain files and other folders within them, but not actual pages.

[snip - another large image]
Files can only contain pages within them.

If you look at some of the alternatives listed above, you'll see that there is an analogous thing in Circus Ponies Notebook and AquaMinds' NoteTaker. They use a notebook metaphor which is more logical given what you're working on. Give 'em a look. Like I said, there are free demos for them, so you can't go wrong.

[radii_22]

I've used also OO 2, and tried different notebooks, as Hogbay's, Macjournal, Circus Ponies, etc. But I got to say, since they are good quality products, no one of them are the real solution to notetaking, at least, to a research and academic level.

1. The need to classify and store the notes in one place, is not accesorial : you can have 3 documents of OO, but when the database of your notes excedes 100 entries (as a lot of researchers do), you have to have a good search engine (search inside the note, semantic search, etc), and a way to do a "smart display".

2. Taking notes in RTF only is a little bit frustrating, when you know that drawing, doing maps, and using the space is the best way of thinking.

It would be nice a product which integrates a "database" model, as iTunes, iView media pro, etc., but instead of songs or images, rich text documents, with the option of drawing and storing drawings. I hope Omni could do that, merging Outliner and Gaffle.

[itai195]

I'm not sure Tiger's search function will solve everyone's problems. One of my favorite uses of note taking apps is to use keywords in order to mark definitions, important equations, quotations, etc. I don't know that any system-level search function will be able to fully support searching and sorting according to those keywords. But beyond that, I'd rather have an application that can do this than have to use a system-level tool. An application that's made for notetaking will always be theoretically capable of doing a better job searching and displaying note data. An analogous example would be to suggest that we'll no longer need iTunes' library features once we have Spotlight... obviously that's a preposterous notion.

psych0 -- try out the Circus Ponies and AquaMinds products mentioned previously, they're the closest applications to OneNote that I've seen on the Mac.

[cpac]

Originally posted by radii_22:
I've used also OO 2, and tried different notebooks, as Hogbay's, Macjournal, Circus Ponies, etc. But I got to say, since they are good quality products, no one of them are the real solution to notetaking, at least, to a research and academic level.

1. The need to classify and store the notes in one place, is not accesorial : you can have 3 documents of OO, but when the database of your notes excedes 100 entries (as a lot of researchers do), you have to have a good search engine (search inside the note, semantic search, etc), and a way to do a "smart display".

2. Taking notes in RTF only is a little bit frustrating, when you know that drawing, doing maps, and using the space is the best way of thinking.

It would be nice a product which integrates a "database" model, as iTunes, iView media pro, etc., but instead of songs or images, rich text documents, with the option of drawing and storing drawings. I hope Omni could do that, merging Outliner and Gaffle.

Ack! No! This is exactly the problem with applications - they try to do everything and when they do, they succeed at nothing!

I can understand the need/urge to have better searching than in available in OmniOutliner as it currently stands (may be improved in the impending 3.0), but regardless, once Tiger comes out - Spotlight should make any of this integration useless - you can have 3 Outliner documents and a couple Graffle documents, and that .pdf file you downloaded, and the powerpoint presentation the professor posted on the class web site (and URLs, and whatever else) and they'll ALL be searched and found via Spotlight.

I realize we've likely got an entire academic year before Tiger is released, but it would probably be that long before any third party app did what you want anyway...

[AmericanPsych0]

Originally posted by cpac:
No offense psych0, but you've made a good choice to simplify your life by switching to a Mac - I'd take the opportunity to switch note-taking styles as well.

It seems to me that all this "one note" is doing is adding yet another layer of organization on top of a file/windowing system that can do the same thing better.

I have to thank you for pointing this out. Reading what you said reminded me that when I first started using OneNote I was put off by the fact that you needed all of your notes in one central folder to be used by it. That is true, yes. The file system (as opposed to the folder system which I just mentioned) is necessary, though. I mean, if I'm working on one story, I would want everything for it in one window, hence the file seperation system.

Thanks for your replies so far, guys. They have helped. Chances are I'll go with DevonNote (as of current. I haven't bought anything yet, and will probably wait a few more days if you want to change my mind ) since it's only $20 (as opposed to, say, OmniOutline's $30 pricetag) since it seems to be pretty cheap for what looks to be a feature-packed app.

Again, you've got a few more days to convince me otherwise, so go ahead.

[torifile]

Originally posted by AmericanPsych0:
I have to thank you for pointing this out. Reading what you said reminded me that when I first started using OneNote I was put off by the fact that you needed all of your notes in one central folder to be used by it. That is true, yes. The file system (as opposed to the folder system which I just mentioned) is necessary, though. I mean, if I'm working on one story, I would want everything for it in one window, hence the file seperation system.

Thanks for your replies so far, guys. They have helped. Chances are I'll go with DevonNote (as of current. I haven't bought anything yet, and will probably wait a few more days if you want to change my mind ) since it's only $20 (as opposed to, say, OmniOutline's $30 pricetag) since it seems to be pretty cheap for what looks to be a feature-packed app.

Again, you've got a few more days to convince me otherwise, so go ahead.

I'd still go with NoteTaker for what you need. I'm a registered user of both DevonThink and NoteTaker and for things like what you described, I think NT is a better solution. IMHO, of course.

ps - do you think you could either remove that image or resize it a bit? It's HUGE on my little powerbook's screen.

[cpac]

Originally posted by AmericanPsych0:
since it's only $20 (as opposed to, say, OmniOutline's $30 pricetag) since it seems to be pretty cheap for what looks to be a feature-packed app.

OmniOutliner is only $19.95 for educational customers (and it comes free on the Pro machines these days).

[Chuckit]

Originally posted by itai195:
I'm not sure Tiger's search function will solve everyone's problems. One of my favorite uses of note taking apps is to use keywords in order to mark definitions, important equations, quotations, etc. I don't know that any system-level search function will be able to fully support searching and sorting according to those keywords.

From what I understand of it, Spotlight's ability to search keywords will be limited only by the developer's willingness to put that support into their Spotlight plugin.

[AmericanPsych0]

Originally posted by torifile:
I'd still go with NoteTaker for what you need. I'm a registered user of both DevonThink and NoteTaker and for things like what you described, I think NT is a better solution. IMHO, of course.

ps - do you think you could either remove that image or resize it a bit? It's HUGE on my little powerbook's screen.

Done. I'm sorry they were so large in the first place. This computer just has a high resolution and I forgot to resize them.

Originally posted by cpac:
OmniOutliner is only $19.95 for educational customers (and it comes free on the Pro machines these days).

Oh, okay. Thanks.

[ad_2001]

I tried all of the apps that you guys mentioned here, but it seems to me that beside word 2004, none of them has the ability to draw on the note itself. I want to use a note taking app in my classes, but word 2004's notebook view is just too simple and I can't really do much that I can usually do in the normal mode (like writing anywhere I want, or format a table.....) so I'm just wondering if you guys have any suggestions for me?

Thanks

[radii_22]

Check out Curio, it includes almost all the capabilities of OneNote. It's more inclined to scketch and brainstorming than to text editing, but it's a nice product.

h||p://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/

--->>>

[Unseelie]

It's serious overkill, but I can tell you that MS One Note runs just fine in Virtual PC.

Originally posted by AmericanPsych0:
I've been using Microsoft OneNote on my Windows machine for awhile, and with me gearing up to move everything over to my iBook, I was hoping anyone with personal experience dealing with note taking applications for the Mac could help me out. I've looked through close to a dozen and have pretty much narrowed to down to three.

• OmniOutliner: I played around with it briefly on a PowerBook at my local Apple Store, but it didn't quite pique my interest. A bit too simple, given I've been working on something with as many features as OneNote.
• iOrganize: This looks like it has something along the lines of OneNote's folder/file feature, which is probably the most important feature I'm looking for. Everything else is negotiable.
• DEVONthink: Definitely at the top of my list right now. It looks like it has all I'd need and then some. Is it much better than DEVONnote? There's a $20 difference in price and I wouldn't want to spend any more than I need to.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[AmericanPsych0]

For what it's worth, I ended up choosing Bartas Technologies' CopyWrite.