Notetaking on the computer

I am a hard core notetaker. I take notes on tutorial sessions, lectures and laboratory classes at the medical school. Besides using plain old paper, I like to use a laptop - a 2009 MacBook White.



I have tried many note taking applications. The best so far were Circus Ponie NoteBook and Curio Professional. NoteBook is somewhat simple, but not so minimalist. Curio is very sophisticated. I have tried Evernote, but I don't like its slowness and lack of interface smoothness.

Now my not-so-old MacBook is giving signs of wear: the battery became swollen. Besides that, a 13.3" laptop is too big to be put a school table every day, and too dangerous to be carried inside a backpack when I ride my motorcycle.

For some time, even before the battery swollen, I have been thinking about having another laptop. A much cheaper laptop, of course. My requirements are:

1. Run Windows or Mac (hackintosh, of course)
2. Screen size between 7" and 11.6"
3. A real decent laptop keyboard with backlight (that excludes tablets and cheap Acer laptops)
4. Support for at least 4GB RAM
5. Cheap parts available (like battery, LCD screen, keyboard)

But if I start using Windows, I can't use Circus Ponie NoteBook and Curio anymore - since they are Mac-only applications. I need a cross-platform notetaking solution.

My requirements for a notetaking application are:

• Be line-oriented - every line is a piece of information, and virtually every text editor supports this
• Support checkmark or strikethrough - to mark that I have already processed/studied that piece of information - actually, I marked items I have already transported into Anki review software
• Be available for offline edition on the computer and online view
• Support image and table attachment
• Be straightforward to use - no LaTeX, even though I know how to use it
• Be cross-platform

I could use ready-made solutions like Evernote, Springpad, Google Docs. I don't like Evernote for the reason I have already said (it's slow and I don't like it's interface). Springpad was discarded for a reason I can't remember now (I guess it's the lack of a desktop offline version). Google Docs has no offline version, which is a must.

Besides that, I don't believe free ready-made solutions are good solutions at all.

I have also tried DEVONThink, Yep, Yojimbo, and text-only editors like Notational Velocity, nvALT, Nottingham - all of them are Mac-only. Well, there are some text-only editors for Windows, similar to Notational Velocity and nvALT. I haven't tried them yet.

For now, the best solution I found is this:

• Use a single folder to put notes, and this folder is synchronized with Dropbox and SugarSync
• Every notebook (a lecture, a tutorial session or a laboratory class) is a single text file with .txt extension, written using Notational Velocity notation (+ Markdown when appropriate)
• Images and tables for a notebook are saved inside Rich Text Format, Microsoft Word or PDF files, and the file name is the same as the notebook text (e.g. Lecture Stomach.txt has associate images inside Lecture Stomach.doc)
• I can create/edit/search notes (only text files) using nvALT - I haven't changed its configuration to use text files instead of a single big file
• I can search notes using Mac Spotlight or Windows Start Menu
• I can see my notes on the web through Dropbox and SugarSync

Extremely simple and frugal, isn't it?

Right now I'm moving all my notes from NoteBook and Curio to nvALT.