myNotes 1.4.2

Reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad

Publisher’s Summary

myNotes is the note-taking program with groundbreaking ease of use and innovative printing capabilities. Its simple and customizable interface lets you focus on notes, ideas or your diary, while printable themes let you print it with different styled themes (stationary plus.)

Introduction

I love note-taking software, much of which I’ve reviewed for macCompanion. Although I am still using DEVONnote as my principal note collection and organizing software, I remain intrigued by the products capabilities as well as my fond memories of trying out version 1.1.1. I reviewed the earlier version for the May 2006 issue of macCompanion. At that time, I enjoyed the interface and the software’s functionality, giving it a 4.5 macC score. Since I’m always curious about how a favored product develops, I decided to do a quick re-review of the product. Although I did not adopt the product then or will now, there is much to recommend to folks who need a straightforward robust and stable collector of “stuff”.

“Read on about what I found.

Working With

Installation, a drag and drop to your application folder is fool proof. All work is done in the three-pane main window. To re-test the product I both added to the myNotes application the types of files that the software supports. These include making notes from PDFs, images {jpg, tiff, and gif…} , text, RTF and MS Word documents. I did not use any of the Apple iApps related features. The source of my inputs, allowing for a quick review was a combination of new snippets of material I’m using for my upcoming reviews and items I’ve recently added to DEVONnote or shadowClipboard to the software grouped notes.

Everything I tried worked just fine. Searching for information in my notes was also easy. In addition, all embedded links, worked fine when importing text or RTF based documents. On the rare occasion that a link didn’t take, its linking tools solved that problem [Font > Link].

Other Package Features

Check out the features of this product at the developer’s web site. I would like once again to state that the product help system is excellent, simple and clear. You will not likely need help using this predicts, but its the just in case.

New in version 1.4.2, myNotes now uses a default email client (set in Apples Mail preferences) to send email. I use Eudora so this enhancement did not serve me.

A Discomfort and a Recheck of my Discomforts in Version 1.1.1

Typing into New Group or Notes Fields — Unlike the newer version of other note and to-do software creating new folder or new note did not make the field available for typing. To name the group/note I had to double click on the newly crated item. That is an inefficient way to have to work.

In addition the auto (note title) naming feature for a new note seemed to only work half of the time, when I pasted information into the new black note field

Complete What? — There was one item in the find menu called complete that confused me. It did nothing. It was also not mentioned in the help file.

Flat Groups (from v. 1.1.1) — The product only allows groups that can only contain one layer of notes. I prefer, indeed require, a deeper hierarchy of notes. I need, at each level (folder) whose contents are another folder or two and some notes at each deeper level. This, from my person use, is the only significant weakness in this otherwise great product. [That’s the primary reason that I DEVONnote.] – Nothing has changed this is still a flat folder organizer.

Auto Naming of Notes (from v. 1.1.1) — According to the publisher, if tired of

inventing names for notes, let myNOTES do it for you! No way,

grabbling the first 20 or 30 characters in a note comes nowhere close to

giving the note a unique and functional name. This feature grows one – its just a matter of starting a new not with the “subject’s focus” in mind.

More Tool Bar Icons (from v. 1.1.1) — An paraphrased from a Version Tracker review, A few additional toolbar icons would also be welcome: Link, delete, text attributes, and color. However, this was not a big deal once you figured out the product’s logical menus. A highlighting tool bar and copy note capability is also very desirable. I know that some of these items can be accessed in the product’s menus, and even have keyboard shortcuts, but I like complete toolbars. Is anyone listening?

Conclusions

The Good News - The product is stable; four plus hours of testing and no freezes or crashes. The developer has effectively implemented Auto-Saving and Backup so you never lose your work, nice belt and suspenders use. myNotes is a note taking program that lets you create, manage and retrieve notes and clippings of all kinds, as well as print with the help of beautiful printable themes. Its simple and easily customizable interface lets you focus on your notes, ideas or your review inputs or love letters.

For those of you who are comfortable with its flat (one layer file) interface and have not yet committed to putting large amounts of information into an other note keeping program, grab a copy and try it. You’ll find it well worth a few minutes of testing. For folks who are graphically obsessed, it also has the best printing features in any product I’ve yet tested including DEVONnote.

The lack of significant change in the products interface between version 1.1.1 and 1.4.2 and my lack of ability to reach the developer forces me to slightly lower my opinion about this product. Most other developers are responsive to reviewer feedback, if nothing else establishing communication.

The Bad News - I still like DEVONnote better, but if you try this product you will likely never reach out to any competing flat-groups oriented notepad smidgets organizer.