PIM Review: Evernote
Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts that compares Journler, Together and Evernote in a PIM faceoff for Macs. The first post can be found here.
Evernote is one of the few cross-platform, web-based apps that I both use and enjoy. Add to it an iPhone app that is nearly as powerful as the web and desktop clients, and you get a clear winner of an application for a personal information manager.
Where Evernote shines
Here’s some of Evernote’s more powerful features:
- Developer and community. Like Journler and Together, Evernote has a strong support forum of users. Given the relatively newness of Evernote, you can imagine that there are a lot of users who are sharing the way they use Evernote and overcome perceived functionality shortcomings.
- Cross-platform. Evernote works on Macs and Windows, so having to use one OS at home and a different OS at work should not be a problem.
- Web-based system. You can get to all of your information from any Internet connection. No need to have your own computer or even a desktop client.
- iPhone app. This is what did it for me. I can add notes, review notes and even edit (some) notes from my iPhone. Being able to add photo notes is killer with the iPhone.
- Image recognition. Besides being cool, I didn’t see the use for text recognition in images before I started using it. Now, I do. Receipts, labels, signs. I search their content constantly now.
- Free or premium. The free version of Evernote has most all of the power of the paid version, plus plenty of room to store what you need. The premium version gives you more storage and the ability to attach documents to notes. I use the premium version.
- Desktop app. The desktop app gives you systemwide shortcuts that make posting to Evernote easy and quick. It’s not as nice as Together or Journler and their quick entry systems, but it works well. As far as look, the app is quite similar to Together, which is nice.
- Syncing. You can’t get better syncing across multiple machines. Just can’t do it.
Shortcomings of Evernote
For all of Evernote’s power, it has a few shortcomings, especially if you are picky about workflow or functionality. (If you use a Mac, I assume you are…)
Here’s where I think Evernote needs to improve:
- Quick entry functionality. Evernote suffers from not having a quick entry functionality akin to Together or Journler. The only way to change metadata in an Evernote note is through the desktop app’s full window.
- Smart folders. This is the most atrocious part of Evernote. While you can use Saved Searches, selecting the saved search (which operates just like a Smart Folder) triggers your tag list to open completely. It’s hard to explain, but use it one time and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Hopefully this functionality will change soon.
Recapping the review
Evernote is my choice. It’s got some functionality flaws that drive me crazy, but it’s far more powerful than either of the other two apps I’ve reviewed. Plus, I can carry it with me anywhere — via the Web or via my iPhone.
Plus, Evernote recently received more funding with the promise of several improvements — including upgrades to the desktop apps. I’m hoping the minor annoyances are soon to be gone!
Evernote offers a free version. The Premium version costs $5/month or $45/year. To see the difference in the versions, visit their comparison page.
Note: You can find the review of Journler here.
Evernote does support adding things via Email. I use it all the time for quick-entry of short notes or photo’s from my iPhone.
It does, but I don’t use that really. I just post from my iPhone using the Evernote client.
I’m assuming the only real difference, save not seeing the note in the context of Evernote, would be that emailing a note (photo especially) would be quicker than uploading via Evernote’s iPhone app.
Right.. But it’s also nice because loading the mail app for a quick note is alot faster than the Evernote Client.. And if you setup things like “Multi Photo”, you can send messages to EverNote that contain multiple photos in a single note, real easy.
Very good review of Evernote. I share some of the same pros and cons. We decided to integrate Evernote into our project management application due to the pro’s you mention about it. During the integration process I got to know the team and they are a top-notch group of people building a great product.
Troy Malone
Is the datalock issue still a problem with Evernote, as is once you get stuff in you can’t get it out? Or has that been resolved. I’d hate to spend time developing a data set that was trapped in one application. Here Journler was fantastic about getting data in and out in a muli-application usable format.
You can export notes into text documents and reimport into other programs, much like Journler.
What I don’t know is how that works with the premium service when you have files embedded in a note. It’s a good question.
A quick review of the forums doesn’t reveal anything more, but you might poke around there.
Hey, check this Google Chrome Extension for Evernote, it is very handy.
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 disappearing”, many did, and the answer you reach in the end is, that your notes are not disappearing, 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 (all my todo list of my site http://www.lingolearn.com were there), and then, again, they have a bug, that you can still can’t access it unless you are online, it is widespread, and many people have this bug. So they send you a ridiculous template, just check it out, a computer whiz 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…