NoteTaker - 2.4

I have used (and paid for) Omni Outliner, NoteBook, and NoteTaker. I've experimented extensively with all three, and I believe each application is a fine example of good coding. However, I have come to the conclusion that NoteTaker is the best of the the bunch. It offers users a wide array of options and features that are just not available with the other products.

From an organizational standpoint, I love NoteTaker's use of the "drawer" which offers an always-available display of notebook contents, history, and a library of other notebooks. I like the application's integration with the internet, Apple's iApps, and AppleScript.

Clipping services are handled with skill by the application. The way NoteTaker implements "clipping services" is more intuitive than the other applications.

Think of NoteTaker as a free-form database with outlining capabilities. It's strength is in its ability to break out of the outline structure (unlike Omni Outliner) and act as a repository for thoughts, information, and date in various formats. NoteBook makes a valient attempt to achieve this kind of flexible power, but it doesn't quite achieve NoteTaker's sophistication. NoteBook offers users elegant simplicity at the expense of some of NoteTaker's more sophisticated features and options.

Frankly, NoteTaker is not without it's faults. I would like to see a more rapid launch time (both Omni Outliner and NoteBook are faster). Likewise, NoteBook manages images in a notebook with greater finesse.

However, all-in-all, NoteTaker is the superior application.

Just an aside: The developers are very responsive. For example, this evening I reported a problem I was having with the positioning of a notebook within my display screen on applicaiton start up. I had a response from the support team with within eleven minutes. You've got to give them credit for responsiveness!

This would be a great program if a couple of things were changed.

(1) It needs to be multiuser. We use it in a law office for client management, but the fact that it is not multiuser limits us considerably.

(2) The user interface is non-standard and we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do things. Apple has a great standard interface, why not use it?

Chose NoteTaker for a few features it had over NoteBook (e.g., ability for a live link to a PDF), but today I used it to prepare some notes for a legal document, and I noticed that when I printed some lines were overlayed. Fixed that by a global change to the font size, but later it dropped some words at the end of a line, resulting in an erroneous fax to my attorney! So, even if this bug were to be fixed, I no longer trust NoteTaker, nor would I ever. (A few irritating display bugs as well, though less serious.)
Just downloaded OmniOutliner which, if OmniGraffle is any guide, should be much more polished.
Don't know how these two compare as far as features go, but I'll take reliability over features any day.

Clicking Download gets you the previous version (1.9.6). The new version is on the Aquaminds website.

No problems installing here.

Matthew

Currently I use NoteTaker mostly for web research and also find it useful for project and training notes. For the work that I do I find that its ability to create clipping services for copying and pasting selections into various notebooks (and pages within those notebooks) to be the most useful. Other features that I frequently use are its notebook indices, notebook libraries, and highlighting. On occasion I've created some web research notebooks and been able to pass them on to colleagues along with the NoteTaker Reader which has been really nice.

However ....

1) This is one of those applications with such wide-ranging capabilities and possible uses that it demands some sort of user forum. I think Aquaminds is remiss is doing so since smaller companies (at least ones that seem to be smaller) are able to do so.

2) When notebooks become very large NoteTaker becomes abysmally slow. I've tried it on both a dual G5/2GHz and a G4/400MHz. A 53.7MB notebook is very slow when clipping to it on my G5 and a clipping to it on my G4 can be measured in minutes -- if the notebook can be opened at all. A 25MB notebook is sluggish on my G5 and more sluggish on my G4 but still generally workable if I'm patient. My workaround for the speed issue is to make a small clippings notebooks and then transfer them to larger notebooks. (I'm also considering upgrading my copy of StickyBrain as an alternative.) However, this takes away from the convenience of having clippings go directly to where I want them. I could break my notebooks down into smaller ones but then this gives me quite a few more files to search through and reduces the value of indexing to me.

So, my rating of 4 is based on -1.5 for speed and -0.5 for the lack of a user forum which I think this product really needs to help users get the most out of it. I then added 1 back since 3 seemed unfair due to all to the features it has that I have not made use of ... yet.