myNOTES 1.1.1 — A note-taking program that lets you create, manage retrieve and print notes and clippings of all kinds
reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad
Developer: Andrei Kozlov, Mishimo Software Shareware $13 USD File Size: ca. 1.1 MB Version Posted: 09 Jan 2006 Trial Version Available, which is limited to 6 note deep groups. The product Help system is excellent. Requirements: G4 or better, Mac OS X 10.3 or later. Audience: All user levels |
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The software was tested on a 1 GHz dual processor PowerPC G4 Macintosh with 2 GB DDR SDRAM running under OS X 10.4.6. |
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Product
and company names and logos in this review may be registered trademarks |
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Strength: This is a great note-taking product. It is easy to use, flexible, elegant and stable that takes advantage of the Panther and Tiger operating system’s native software.
Weakness: None that I could find but I was unable to test of its features because I don’t use Apple’s mail or Address book nor do I chat, no not never. [The world needs Philistines – doc.]
Introduction
I love note-taking software, some of which I’ve reviewed previously for macCompanion. Although I am using DEVONnote as my principal note collection and organizing software, I was intrigued by the developer description of this package, on the MacUpdate site. “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 styles. myNotes includes themes from basic Black and White to an outstanding Sakura theme.” Read on about what I found.“
Using the Product/Features
Installation, a drag and drop to your application folder is fool proof. All work is done in the three-pane man window. To test the product I both added the types of files that the software supports (PDFs, images {jpg, tiff, and gif…} , text, RTF and MS Word documents, and some of the many notes I’ve added to DEVONnote to the software. Everything I tried worked just fine. Searching for information in my notes was also easy. All embedded links, worked fine when importing test or RTF based documents. On the rare occasion that a link didn’t take, the linking tools solved that problem [Font > Link].
The developer notes that, “With myNotes you can instantly look up your buddies by first or last name and send them an e-mail, start a chat session and open a homepage with just one click! In addition you can search your contacts by zip code, city, state, country and a company name.” I for the most part agree — see the conclusions to this review for more. I further agree with the developer that the software is a well-implemented tool for keeping track of small bits of information - from your ideas and to-do lists to anything interesting you discover online.
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. Now why doesn’t MS Word do this in a better fashion? However, based on their latest new announcements, they don’t do the new Windows replacement OS very well either.
Key Features and my Two Cents (…Some Andrei Kozlov doesn’t highlight.)
Apple’s Address Book Integration – Not tested, I use a FileMaker Pro database for contact information.
Customizable Document Work Area (background picture and transparency)
Instant search/filtering – This works well, perhaps not instant, for my large test data set, but very fast.
Live Word and Characters Counting – You all know I’m verbose, but its nice to be reminded when I have too much of the blarney stone in my writing.
Import And Export of Rich and Plain Text – Works like a charm keeping active links well, active.
Drag and Drop Fully Enabled - Just what you’d expect from a well crafted to Apple’s Macintosh programming conventions, piece of software. – doc’s software features premise, if it doesn’t drop and drag, dump the program!
Full Unicode and Text Encodings Support – The feature allows you to Write and search in any language. I had no need for this feature so did not test it.
Customized Printing Formats (themes) - Make stunning prints with 5 customizable themes, plain or fancy to suit your needs or moods. My only concern with printing was that I could not find anyway to add white space around the edges o the printed notes to allow wider margins — but I did not look very hard.
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Print Dialog |
Printable Themes |
Live Email and Internet Links – A must feature of any word or text processing associated program these days. Of course, its too bad that other note and ToDo programs I’ve test make creating live links so difficult; kudos to the developer.
Deals Well, with PDF Files – Drag a PDF (e.g., an illustrated recipe) into a new note and there you’ll be, its part of your specified note group set. I was not able to determine whether a PFD with imbedded active links transferred that ability to myNotes, but I’ll keep checking, but far no luck. Active Links in MSW documents did transfer to myNOTES
Using the myNotes from the Dock – From the application’s Icon stored in the dock you can easily create new groups and documents, a nice feature
Backups — myNotes keeps the last 10 backups created, check this out in ~/Library/Application Support/myNotes/Backup.
A Few Gripes
Flat Groups — 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.
Auto Naming of Notes — 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. I turned this feature off in the preferences after a few minutes use.
More Tool Bar Icons — 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 logical menus. A highlighting capability is also very desirable. (In part from Bud Simrin)
Deinstalling Information Needed — The help file does not contain information on how to remove the application and its associated files. Since the installed files include both the data (notes-groups) files and the preference file, removal my not be obvious to a new Macintosh user.
Conclusions
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. It also has the best printing features in any product I’ve yet tested.
That said, there are some limitations to this review. Since I don’t chat, and don’t use Apples mail and address programs, my experience with this product will differ significantly from yours. Never the less, based on Internet reviews by others, I am convinced that the items I did not test, will work as well as those I did. I rate this product 4.5 macCs
