I’m trying to invest in a cross-platform note-taking system. What I’d like for this system to do is:

  • Be available on whatever device I’m on - primarily a Windows machine, a Mac, iPhone, and an iPad.
  • Have the ability to take notes offline, then upload them for later access.
  • Have the ability to access notes while offline, somehow storing a local copy on each device.
  • Easily export all my data - just in case the company or system goes under.
  • Be easy to use and secure.

I like the idea of Evernote. I’ve tried to use it before when it first became available on the iPhone. For some reason, I haven’t taken to the system. But now that I have the application on all my devices, I’ll take the opportunity to take it for a full run. I’m going to try using the free version of Evernote for all my note-taking (e.g. blog posts, blog ideas, longer personal projects, etc.) The only thing the free version appears to be missing from my list above is the offline abilities. Those can be had with a premium account. Let me set a 30-day trial period, ending on February 25th. Let’s see how that goes.

So what am I using now?

I’m trying to get by with Elements. It’s a cool little iPhone and iPad app that syncs with Dropbox. But that’s the limitation, the availability of the app on those two platforms. I know I can use a simple text editor to access the Dropbox-created file or create a text file and put it into Dropbox for editing in Elements. But it seems laborious at this point. But it might be the more elegant solution if the Evernote software on the Mac and Windows machine proves to be cumbersome. Who knows.

I’ve also been trying out Scrivener for writing. Again, the problem is it only resides on my Mac. And again, I suppose I could export the file to Dropbox to make further edits, but it seems too much work to accomplish this.

I’ll let you know how it progresses.