Note This

By Wayne Maruna

            Post-it Notes (alias sticky notes) can be found just about anywhere there is a desk, computer monitor, or telephone.  They’ve been around for years.  I wrote about their computer counterpart back in June of 2010 (http://pages.suddenlink.net/wamaruna/StickyNotes.html). The app ‘Sticky Notes’ is still available and comes included with Windows 10.  You’ll find it in your apps listing, where you can easily add it to your taskbar for ready reference (right-click the app and choose ‘Pin to Taskbar’). Stickies are great for short-term reminders, but sometimes you want your notes to stick around for a longer period of time. There’s an app for that too!

            I used to use a program called Evernote, which is a cross-platform (runs on many operating systems and devices), ‘freemium’ app designed for note taking, organizing, and archiving. It is ‘cloud-based’ and designed to be accessible from multiple devices on-demand.  I used it regularly until the company changed their free version such that it was only available from any two devices of your choosing.  You could still get Evernote for multiple devices and upload as much as 10GB per month for $35 per year, but my needs were trivial in comparison and not worth the cost, so I went looking elsewhere.

            I did not have to look far.  Microsoft had been pushing me to look into their free OneNote program which was available with my Windows 10 systems.  I had ignored it since I had been happy with Evernote, but once I explored OneNote and got to using it, I found I liked it even better.

            Like Evernote, OneNote is multi-platform.  That means there are versions for my Windows computer, my Chromebox, my Ubuntu Linux computer (through a Google Chrome extension), my Apple iPad, Mac Mini, and my Android cell phone.  It is also cloud-based, which means that any note I add or modify can be seen identically on my other devices without any further intervention on my part.

            You should be able to find OneNote in your app listing.  If it’s not there, go to the Microsoft Store (a tile in Windows 10) and do a search, then install OneNote.

            OneNote allows you to create different pages or tabs for different areas of interest.  For example, I have tabs for Computer, House, Travel, Medical, Misc., and several other specialized areas.  My House tab is where I keep notes on house paint color formulas, service provider phone numbers, furniture fabrics, dimensions, and the like.  My Travel tab is used to store our various ‘rewards programs’ numbers, our TSA known traveler numbers, and the mileage markers where I can find restrooms on the interstates we travel most often.  The medical tab has notes on prescription numbers and dosages.  I have a tab labeled Clinic, which contains a large number of permanent notes I use to keep track of computers and printers at Merci Clinic where I do volunteer tech support.

            The great thing is it doesn’t matter where I key in these notes.  As long as I have my cell phone with me, they are always available to me.

            All the above notes are more or less of a semi-permanent nature.  For quick, short-term reminder notes, Sticky Notes are the better choice.

            OneNote also utilizes something called OneNote Clipper, also available free from the Microsoft Store.  It installs as a browser extension, so that if you are on a website and you see something you’d like to capture and keep – a recipe, perhaps – you just click on the OneNote icon on your browser toolbar, and OneNote saves a copy of the page in your OneNote app.  Pretty sweet! OneNote is very useful, and the price is right.  If you haven’t yet checked it out, why not now?