The Journal or OneNote??

[Erock]

Hey I've been looking for a software program to do some journaling/note-taking kinds of activities and I'm wondering which of these you guys like better. I know Steve uses The Journal, and I'm demoing both of them right now, but I'm curious as to which is the favorite among you more experienced users.

Erock

[febflake]

Problems with such systems (I was a huge advocate for onenote) is that over the months (and years for me) the system is holding so much information that you need a secretary to handle it if you are information addict as I was.

I can only suggest you to first try journaling with single text files that you could edit in notepad2 or any editor that looks more eye-candy or aesthetic than notepad (intype text editor does look cool). You will see if you can commit to use a computer to record thoughts (maybe handwriting is your stuff) then if you ave the use of those entries.

If you only record text inputs, consider using the computer as the interface (with its drag'n'drop, time sorting etc..).. you could find that many features aren't really needed or suited. Moreover you'll always be able to use txt files but onenote or any other systems is a pita to get the information out.

Onenote comes with really nice things like audio recording, checkboxes, great sync with outlook, word integration as well and can store files too. The ui is really cool too, just click the icon, write something, close it and voilà.. but the system tends to get really clogged over time.. and navigating the stored data is much harder than navigating a folder structure on your hard drive. Also people tend to use it for gtd and archiving and note taking basket.. which can make organising the whole thing a real headache.

My 2ç.

edit: evernote is nice counter part to onenote.

[Steve Pavlina]

What need are you looking to fill? If you're looking to manage a lot of personal information that you need to have accessible (goals, tasks, recipes, school notes, etc), I'd favor OneNote or a program designed for that purpose. If you're specifically looking for a journaling program though, I'd use a program which is designed for that purpose.

Another thing to consider is the level of support you want. OneNote is a Microsoft product, while The Journal is supported by an independent developer. There's no contest when it comes to providing superior product support -- indie developers win hands down in that arena. That's one reason I tend to favor indie products, all else being equal.

Although The Journal and OneNote can both perform many different tasks, each is designed for a different primary function. I wouldn't recommend using The Journal as your main information manager, nor would I recommend using OneNote as a journaling program.

Personally I'd recommend both programs if your budget allows.

[Erock]

Ah thanks for the insight guys (and anymore that follows). So The Journal is more for journaling and OneNote is more for information management. And febflake, you really made me think about eventually getting information out of OneNote, that could be a pain in the rear. You can't just save it as a .doc file huh? That's annoying.

Erock

[febflake]

You can save some pages as a .doc file. But you lose meta information (like checkboxes, layout and since onenote is a visual tool it's very important to keep that information and links from one note to another). Not a problem if you have only 100 notes that are well ordered.. but after two years of use my onenote folder weighs 1200mb and holds more than a thousand section. And you have to go through it one piece of information at a time, you can't batch it.

It wouldn't be a problem if you can fly high enough and use a search engine (like msn search desktop which is truly the best solution today to search files and content) but it's a different paradigm and not everyone uses its computer in this way. And you're still locked in to onenote.

.txt file (and html for that matter) will always be readable in the long term future and on any platform (switch to a mac, linux or a new os?).

[WanderingOak]

Has anybody had any experience with MacJournal? While The Journal might be a decent product for a Windows machine, it won't run on a Mac without Parallels (and I would need a new Mac for that). The ideal journaling product would be one that was cross-platform compatible that would run on Win/Mac/*nix. That way I wouldn't have to switch applications if I decided to go back to Linux, or became assimilated by the Borg and started using Windows. I wonder how difficult it would be to get MacJournal to run on a *nix box or with Cygwin?