Preparations for B-school - Part 2 - Software - Note-taking

This is Part 2 of an ongoing series of articles - Preparations for B-School. Click to see Part 1 of the series...

Software
Your B-school education requires you to be on top of your studies, your activities and have a complete picture of what's happening around you all the time. To aid you in these tasks, there are a few software packages, both desktop and in the cloud that can aid you in this process. Today I will be concentrating on Note-taking software.

Why note-taking software?
During school times, one ingrained habit that was followed without much thought was note-taking. Students usually used a notebook for each subject. Of course in the Indian system of education, you had a myriad of notebooks to struggle through
Class notebook
Rough notebook
Assignment notebook
Project notebook
and this was for each of the subjects.

While this was a cumbersome process, it _did_ help organize the content of the class.

The premise behind note-taking software is the same as well. It's a two-fold objective -
a. Serve as a receptacle (a source and a sink if you will) for all the things you need to have for future reference
b. Help you organize the various bits of information so that retrieval would be easy

While you are more than welcome to carry notebooks to organize this thought process, I personally believe that it's redundant as you will be carrying your laptop wherever you go during the various activities. It's lighter on your back-pack and serves as a single point of reference for all your activities.

Personal note: I am organization freak and want the information that I have stored in my fingertips. Consequently, I have tried and tested most of the note-taking software that's available for the Windows, Linux and Mac platform.

Things to consider
As different people want different things from their note-taking software, I will try and keep this as generic as possible. Depending on your needs and my listing of pros-and-cons of the software packages, you might be able to hazard a useful guess =)!

1. The note-taking software should be light on the system: Over the course of 12-24 months, the amount of information you gather will be humongous. Typically note-taking software save the information in their own formats (could be text/binary). Now, this information needs to be loaded and processed every time you run the application. Consequently, the application must preferably keep it in the text format and be fast in loading the information, processing it and be light on the system resources while doing so!
2. The information should be organized easily: As the information increases, the user will typically be forced to bring in an organization method for referencing the information in the future. The application must provide taxonomic methods of organizing the information - tags. It should also preferably be indexable by various desktop searching methods (Windows Desktop Search / Google Desktop Search / Spotlight / Beagle) etc.
3. There must be an easy way to sync the information: The notes that I am taking down should be easily synced across various platforms - Windows / OS X / Linux / hand-held devices / internet. Only this would truly allow me to obtain my information anytime, anywhere.
4. It should handle various types of information: There will be various types of information that I will throwing at the application - serial numbers, passwords, web-urls, pictures, snaps, and the likes. The data should not only be seamlessly organized, it would be preferable if it will be able to store it properly as well

The Contenders
Let's have a look at the contenders. Taking into consideration my requirements and the packages that I have tested, here are the major contenders with platform information

1. Evernote (Windows/Mac/Handheld(soon)/Cloud)
2. Yojimbo (Mac)
3. Microsoft OneNote(Windows)

Now, let's evaluate each of them

1. Evernote Platforms - Windows, Mac, Handheld, Cloud (Internet)
One of the strongest note-taking / personal information holding package that I have seen. Instead of providing a review here, what I will do is give you a quick and dirty glance of its pros and cons and provide links to the reviews as footnotes!

Pros:
+ Multi platform
+ Can store images as well as text
+ Has a very user-friendly Clipper functionality
+ Synchronizes with the cloud - so the information is truly available anytime anywhere
+ Has the image-text recognition capability, which is phenomenally useful!

Cons:
- It's still in Beta (and has some associated bugs)
- The minute it goes out of Beta, it could move into a paid platform
- Tags (if used excessively) can be hell to manage
- No dedicated types - Serial Numbers, Passwords, etc
- Limited number of beta invites
- No way to index the information (only way to search is via the application)
- Cannot handle .pdfs, .docs, and such information types

Update (2008-May-12): With the latest version of Evernote (1.1.0) you can manage .pdfs as notes. Furthermore, Spotlight also indexes all the note contents!! (Yay!! This rocks)!!

2. Yojimbo Platforms - Mac only
This was the be-all end-all application for information management prior to Evernote days. Furthermore, this does a beautiful job with the interface which allows intuitive running of the application and makes the usage a pleasure. What Yojimbo lacks in functionality from Evernote, is the image recognition capability. However, it more than makes up for that with its robust quality and integration with the Operating System!!

Pros:
+ Amazing integration with OS X and applications
+ Synchronization with iCal, Mail, iTunes etc
+ Intuitive, easy to use interface
+ Dedicated types of information - Serial Numbers, URLs, Images etc..
+ Amazing range of information data types - You can throw anything at it and it will store it
+ Indexable content - Spotlight can be used to search for the information stored in Yojimbo

Cons:
- No Image recognition system
- No true Windows application so there's a platform lock-in
- No synchronization mechanism other than .Mac
- $39 for a single user, $69 for 5 users

3. Microsoft OneNote Platforms - Windows Only
Part of the Office suite, Microsoft OneNote is a very professional note-taking application. It stores the notes in its proprietary format, which is non-indexable. However, it has a very rich feature-set, and a very professional interface (albeit Microsoft(y)).

Pros:
+ Uses a traditional 3-ring binder approach
+ Can take a wide variety of rich information to make up a note - text, graphics, web-pages, audio, video etc
+ Has this ability to attach scribbles to main notes (via side-notes and labels feature)
+ This is more of a note-taking application and less of an information management tool
+ Powerful sharing features in the Office eco-system

Cons:
- A copy of OneNote costs somewhere south of $100.
- Windows only
- No presence in the cloud (Have to confirm with the Live Workspace / Mesh tho)
- Not indexable

My Take
I prefer Evernote to any other note-taking / information management software as of now because of the powerful synchronization capabilities and the slowly maturing feature-set. However, I would love it if the clients for Evernote were a bit more robust and they continue to maintain it as a freeware.

Do you have any other note-taking software which you use in class? If so, please feel free to share the information in the comments!

More software packages will be analyzed in Part 3 of Preparations for B-school