Last Updated: 16 March 2011
The first version of this post was written back in July 2009 after I’d been using Evernote for just a short time. I loved it then and I still love it now. We fell out for a while when version 3.5 was released, but the people at Evernote took the on board the negative feedback hurled at them through comments on their blog and rewrote the program from the ground up.
In October 2010 version 4 for Windows was released.
Here’s a quote from the blog post announcing the update:
Evernote 4 is a major departure from Evernote 3.5 in every way. While 3.5 added tons of great new features, there were some problems we simply couldn’t fix: the blurry fonts, slow startup times, large memory footprint, and poor support for certain graphics cards were all issues that the technology behind 3.5 (Windows .net and WPF) was incapable of resolving. As a result, we ended up chasing down platform bugs rather than adding the great features our users wanted.
So we decided to start over from scratch, with fast, native C++ that we knew we could rely on. As you’ll see, the results are amazing. This new version will set a foundation for rapid improvement.
In the words of Peaches and Herb, we were “Reunited and it feels so good”.
I use Evernote almost every single day. Mostly for making notes and taking screengrabs for blog posts, but it does so much more than that. There’s Evernote Trunk for instance, which lets you access almost 100 add-ons you can use from within Evernote.
Okay, enough preamble, here’s the list.
10 Reasons why you should download and try Evernote
- It’s lightweight, fast and very easy to use
- You can store data locally and/or synch it to a folder in the cloud
- It automatically saves notes – there’s no need to look for the ‘save’ button
- You store notes inside Notebooks so you can create a Notebook for each project you’re working on
- Notes can be tagged much like a blog post
- Evernote creates excellent screengrabs (including the images on this page)
- It’s great for single or collaborative use
- The basic version is free
- You can email notes from within the application
- You, or any member of your team, can access your account from any device that has Evernote installed on it
I don’t know what I would do without it
I’ve used Evernote for a couple of weeks almost two years now and there isn’t anything I don’t like about it. I use the Evernote desktop app for Windows and it works like a dream. Aside from WordPress and Outlook, I would say that Evernote is the program I use most, and I recommend it to anyone who cares to listen.
The basic version of Evernote is free, but if you are a heavy user you can opt for one of the premium options:
Evernote is available for the following platforms:
I hope you find it as useful as I do.
A more in-depth review of Evernote
I recently started using Evernote and its “free” storage space is severely limited. I have over 4000 pics on my iphone and have used only half the iphone capacity. I uploaded 166 pics from the iphone to Evernote, used 99% of Evernote upload capacity and recieved a warning notice that Evernote utilization would be restricted until the next cycle. From a practical standpoint Evernotes data restriction allows only 2% utilization of my iphones capacity per month. With this strict data limitation, it is more functional to use my iphone, ipad, and laptops and “Forget Evernote”.
Sounds like a wonderful tool, but seriously???? I have have to jump through hoops to load my thousands of Outlook notes into it. I won’t waste my time.
Nevernote!
Are you really going to buy a notes software that in 5 years will cost you more than the actual ipad?
Well, maybe, but this one is a real disaster.
You will not be able to access your notes offline, YES, again, if you write notes, and you want to access them when you are not connected to the internet, it will be IMPOSSIBLE.
They don’t tell you this, and why? because they want you to write many notes, and then when you realize the problem, you will have to buy this thing, for 5$ a month!!
I was searching google for days of :”Why are my evernotes dissapearing”, many did, and the answer you reach in the end is, that your notes are not dissapearing, its actually intentional, so you will have to buy it later.
And here comes the best part, I bought it.
I bought it because I needed the notes, and then, again, they have a bug, that you can still cant access it unless you are online, it is widespread, and many people have this bug.
So they send you a ridicolous template, just check it out, a computer wiz will probably have problems with doing what they want, instead of saving my time, this unethical program has taken hours, and much frustration.
Check their reply, and BEWARE, those guys are unethical, stay away.
Are you creating notes while offline, then attempting to edit them (before going online again) and finding the contents blank? Or are you attempting to access notes that exist in your account, clicking into them to edit them, and finding *those* contents blank. If the former, that is a bug, that should be corrected with the instructions we sent you previously. If the latter, it can be corrected by setting up your offline notebooks.
Once you set up your Offline Notebooks, you need to sync them completely before they will be available to read offline. To do so:
On the iPhone/iPod click Settings
On the iPad click the “Satellite” icon and go to Settings
Then select Notebooks and set the slider to “On” for any notebooks you wish to download.
Depending on the size of your notebooks, this can take hours, or possibly up to a day. We suggest doing this over wifi for the fastest sync time.
Until you have completed this synchronization step, you will not be able to read your notes offline, as they have not been stored on your device.
Also, any notes that contain links to files, as opposed to the actual file attachments, will be able to be viewed offline, but the linked web pages are not stored, so when you click the link, you will receive a Page-Not-Found error.
Evernote Support
Hahaha, yeah, right…