Notes Plus vs. Note Taker HD

[reputationZed]

Originally Posted by Ipadtraveler

?.. but overall I think Notetaker HD is the better App for the moment. .

If only it didn't look like a Unix X11 app.

[ksmith80209]

Originally Posted by reputationZed

If only it didn't look like a Unix X11 app.

+1. The problem with Note Taker HD is it feel very much like an app "designed" by an engineer. It has all the right features — in fact, it's jammed with features. But for me, it always feels like things that should be quick and intuitive take 1 or 2 more clicks or menus than they should. What I'm trying to say is that if he put a little more time into interaction design instead of adding functionality, this could be a really great app.

[Mad Mac Maniac]

I know notes plus finally just recently added an actual eraser. Can anyone compare it's utility compared to other writing apps?

[Fireproof!]

Originally Posted by ksmith80209

+1. The problem with Note Taker HD is it feel very much like an app "designed" by an engineer. It has all the right features — in fact, it's jammed with features. But for me, it always feels like things that should be quick and intuitive take 1 or 2 more clicks or menus than they should. What I'm trying to say is that if he put a little more time into interaction design instead of adding functionality, this could be a really great app.

Totally agree. I couldn't get past the UI - seemed too distracting and complex for what I wanted in an efficient note-taking app.

Originally Posted by Mad Mac Maniac

I know notes plus finally just recently added an actual eraser. Can anyone compare it's utility compared to other writing apps?

Feature/function-wise, it's quite nice. User interface is very slick too. I really like it. The problem I had was in the zoomed writing mode, my writing strokes would lag and flicker and it was too distracting for me. I'm on an iPad1 though and the ipad 2 might not have the problem. The developer suggested I close all open multi-tasking apps and restart the iPad, but that didn't fix it for me. He said he's got more performance improvements coming, so I'll try it again in the future.

I do really like the fact that you can move around blocks of text as needed and that your drawings can be converted to clean vector shapes.

[rdstoll]

I agree with several comments here. I'm in search of that "perfect" note taking app and have yet to find it but Notes Plus comes the closest. Notes Taker HD to me is just like people said...it's like an engineer constructed the app. I don't find that app to be at all intuitive. I bought it for the organization and ability to "tag" notes...that's a feature I really like as sometimes you might have a note that could fit into various folder subjects. I'm sure if I really sat down and gave Note Taker HD my time and effort I can learn to like it and get used to it but I don't like to have to think about what I'm doing when I'm taking notes.

The thing that Notes Plus has going for it is the ability to write quickly as their auto-advance is spectacular. As some have noted I've had some issues of lag and flickering but that's the exception rather than the rule. Otherwise I'm able to take notes rather quickly and efficiently. I am using a JustMobile stylus that does a good job...I haven't tried any others so far. What Notes Plus needs is somewhat better organizing (tags) and PDF annotation.

[gugy]

I tried Penultimate, it writes OK but it lacks some beyond basic functionality. I tried Note Plus while it's better and offers more options I have some hard time with few letters. When I write E for example it doesn't show all the lines on the screen.
I am curious about Note Taker HD but I am not sure I want to pay another $4.99 for it.
I use Alupen stylus. I want to buy the Bamboo when is available, I heard it is very precise.

[meslielee]

Hello,


For a years, i used Note Plus but recently i have discovered a new note taking application which is Beesy. This application is like a professionnal note taking. During, your meeting, Beesy is really helpful and useful. Note taking is really fast and easy. Also, you can send your minutes easily with screenshots to your colleagues. Plus, you can manage your tasks and ToDo. This application is really complete and efficient for people who use Ipad with a professionnal way

If some people are interested, you can find information on their website http://www.beesapps.com/beesy-ipad-to-do/
or google "Beesy"

Cheers

[jojoba]

Originally Posted by mkitchen

Thanks for the rec, but i am looking for the apps primary purpose to be handwriting notes.

IME, notability is the best app around for hand writing, and I've tried quite a few of them. I prefer it to 7Notes HD (although that's also a high quality app).

[Mad Mac Maniac]

Originally Posted by meslielee

Spammy spammy speak

Be gone spam-man!

For the record GoodNotes is pretty good

[hardy74]

Notability gets my vote, too. The ink looks great and it has all the features I want (including zoom function, ability to search, typing, filling out pdfs, synchronizing with dropbox...)

The support is also great. If you have a question,problem or suggestion for features, just write on their blog and you get a fairly quick response from the developers.

[kylelong100]

I like notify by underscore too.

It ha infinite size paper.
The author seems like really bright. Henrik. He did this on spare time he has when he is free from work.
Amazing features like large zoom adjustments and many others.

[Moni89]

I use Beesy. Recently released. A very good app for business and note taking. http://www.beesapps.com/beesy-ipad-to-do/

[sk1wbw]

NotesPlus by a mile. I have both. The features in Notes Plus can't be beat.

[richimages]

I'm pasting from my comment in another thread:
~~~~~~~~~~

My History ...

Note Taker HD
The first handwriting app I settled on was Note Taker HD. This was quite a long time ago. I was excited about how well the zoom window worked. However, now nearly all good handwriting apps use a zoom window. Things may have changed for this app by now, but back then there were two things I didn't like about Note Taker HD - (1) jaggy marks when zoomed in. Seems the smoothing wasn't very good. (BTW ... other apps that boasted "smoothing" were over smoothing - and missing some of the intended characteristics of the stroke.) (2) The second thing that I didn't like about this app was it's GUI interface. The organization was lacking a bit. I found quickly found another app that addressed both of these dislikes, and also used the zooming window feature that I did like about Note Taker HD.

UPAD
IMO, UPad is a fantastic handwriting app. I still think it has one of the most accurate stroke recognition engines out there. It's very quick and accurately follows the intended stroke with a fantastic balance between filtering and accurately. It's great. There's only one thing that I feel could improve UPad ... that would be how the ZOOM WINDOW ADVANCE FUNCTION works. As it is, (and, by the way several handwriting zoom windows work this way ) when you enter into that last bit of the zoom window, the app waits for writing to stop for a short amount of time - and then snaps the window to the next section. That works fine for about 80% of the time - but being in the MIDDLE OF A WORD RIGHT THERE, or, having to dot an "i" or cross a "t" right there sometimes was not done quickly enough by me. The dotting and crossing was done in the next section. Also, since this happens often, you enter into a mode of writing quickly - which causes you to become messy! Still, this is a great app - and probably one of the best as far as accurately following intended strokes. But I soon found a better app that addresses this complaint.

Notes Plus
Since I have been investigating several handwriting apps - I have populated a "HANDWRITING APPS" folder on my iPad with several apps. I have bought, tied, and quickly wrote off several that have just sat in that folder unused! One day, I decided to go back and try a few of them again since it had been quite a while since I originally bought several of them. Notes Plus was one of those that I bought back in the beginning. I quickly found that it has gone through lots of changes - I was pleasantly surprised! If you haven't tried this app lately - you owe it to yourself to give it another try. You may have been like me and just wrote it off in the past, but may be pleasantly surprised by it now.

Here's what I really like about this app - it's ZOOM WINDOW ADVANCE FUNCTION ! There is no "marked off" last section visible to you. But once you write past 50% of the window, you then see the end of your writing repeated in the starting third of the window. Why is this great? Because, you have the choice to use either the remaining last half OR start over in the first third! Either way is fine. If you just ended a word, then start the box over - but if you're in the middle of a word, well, then just complete it. This app is the only one that has really solved the problem of a zoom window being as seamless as possible to a natural workflow of writing!

There are a lot of bells and whistles about this app, but for basic handwriting - and really using that feature - this seems to be the best app out there.

Please let me know if there's another app that works it's zoom window like this!

Now, having said that, there are some hic-ups every now an then with this app. It's stroke recognition engine is very very good - it smooths just fine and it does follow the intended stroke. It's quick and responsive on my iPad 2. But every now and then, it seems to just blank out for a split second during following a stroke; when it does, it simply decides to draw a straight line from before it blanked out to when it returns back to following! This may cause the lower part of a "p" to get chopped off. But, this is a rare occurrence - and I do tend to write in cursive. Not sure this would happen if you print - which it seems most people do. Still, this happens so infrequently, and I'm noticing less and less with each update, I'm very happy to live with this app as is.


Perhaps there may be a better app I still need to find. I look forward hearing recent updates from other. Like I said earlier, it's hard to keep up ... things are constantly changing!

[Taustin Powers]

Originally Posted by richimages

Notes Plus
Since I have been investigating several handwriting apps - I have populated a "HANDWRITING APPS" folder on my iPad with several apps. I have bought, tied, and quickly wrote off several that have just sat in that folder unused! One day, I decided to go back and try a few of them again since it had been quite a while since I originally bought several of them. Notes Plus was one of those that I bought back in the beginning. I quickly found that it has gone through lots of changes - I was pleasantly surprised! If you haven't tried this app lately - you owe it to yourself to give it another try. You may have been like me and just wrote it off in the past, but may be pleasantly surprised by it now.

Here's what I really like about this app - it's ZOOM WINDOW ADVANCE FUNCTION ! There is no "marked off" last section visible to you. But once you write past 50% of the window, you then see the end of your writing repeated in the starting third of the window. Why is this great? Because, you have the choice to use either the remaining last half OR start over in the first third! Either way is fine. If you just ended a word, then start the box over - but if you're in the middle of a word, well, then just complete it. This app is the only one that has really solved the problem of a zoom window being as seamless as possible to a natural workflow of writing!

There are a lot of bells and whistles about this app, but for basic handwriting - and really using that feature - this seems to be the best app out there.

Please let me know if there's another app that works it's zoom window like this!

GoodNotes zoom window works the same way. I found it to be even snappier and very good when it comes to line breaks.

It's lacking handwriting recognition though - once they add that, it will be superior to Notes Plus, IMO.

[richimages]

Originally Posted by Taustin Powers

GoodNotes zoom window works the same way. I found it to be even snappier and very good when it comes to line breaks.

It's lacking handwriting recognition though - once they add that, it will be superior to Notes Plus, IMO.

Thanks for sharing that app Taustin Powers .... I just downloaded it ... nice app for the 30 second spin. I'll have to check it out more fully when I get home from work.

Lately I have found myself forgoing lots of Niceties about Notes Plus ... (I noticed some performance issues a bit ago on an iPad 3) ... and have been using NoteShelf. I've found myself really enjoying the navigational thumbnail view of all pages for a given book in that app ... very nice well-thought out feature!!! And that you may clone pages. So ... I load up several different paper types in the same book, and then cloning the next page that I want to write on in that book. It's very nice that pages can use a "drag-and-drop" to rearrange them in the particular order that you want, as well as being copied/moved into other books.

There are just too many different paper types in NoteShelf ... I haven't seen an app with more ...

Anyway, this app seems to have a bit of that with it's bookself view ... I'll check out more later on ...

[Taustin Powers]

I haven't tried Noteshelf yet, cause I read you can't import/annotate PDF's with it. Is this correct?

I've played some more with both Notes Plus and GoodNotes. I prefer the overall feel of GoodNotes - the design, the UI, the shape detection mode, the inking, performance, etc... The only reason to choose Notes Plus over it in my opinion is the handwriting recognition. That's a pretty good reason though, if it's a feature you like to use!

[richimages]

Originally Posted by Taustin Powers

I haven't tried Noteshelf yet, cause I read you can't import/annotate PDF's with it. Is this correct?

...

Can't remember if there's a free version or not, I think there is. If there is ... you should give it a try just to know what it's like. If you like GoodNotes, then I think you'll really like NoteShelf ... they are pertty similiar.

In particular, make a book that's been populated with pages and take a look at the thumbnail view of a book, you can clone a page ... sometimes if people want me to share notes from a meeting ... I'll take the page, clone it (which contains the writing on the page when it's cloned) and then write my annotations/questions/highlights on MY COPY, and share the original copy with them. Also handy for placing the same page into several different books.



Of course, I love the cut and downsize tool ... allowed me to write big and then shrink, and perhaps shrink again if needed, to rearrange a technical page.

[Taustin Powers]

There's no free version, I don't think.

I'll probably pick it up when it goes on sale next time. That's what I did with Remarks and Notes Plus. :-)

What about the pdf importing/annotating though?

[richimages]

Originally Posted by Taustin Powers

There's no free version, I don't think.

I'll probably pick it up when it goes on sale next time. That's what I did with Remarks and Notes Plus. :-)

What about the pdf importing/annotating though?

No import for PDF ... at least not that I can see ...

[aynaa]

Just downloaded UPAD ..its pretty look nice!

[Ruffian829]

Originally Posted by maaz

i use notability.

+1

[epicmar]

I own and have used NoteTaker HD, NotesPlus, GoodNotes, Remarks, 7Notes HD, Notability and several others. We are fortunate to have a lot of very good notetaking apps available at very low prices. I have switched between note taking apps several times, but find that for me Notability offers a bit more than the others I have used and would be surprised to see it toppled from its top position in the charts.

[shly0718]

Goodnotes is my go to app,,always

But recently I want to try noteshelf which is really stunning !!!

[GerritV]

While I haven't used Notetaker HD, I stopped using Notes+ for several reasons, and I admit them to be personal:

- cluttered interface, that takes up too much screen estate
- ugly interface
- way too many functionalities for me

My absolute favorite has become Noteshelf:

- relatively clean and clearly layed out interface (although no fan of wooden shelfs)
- enough functionalities for handwriting notes
- highly responsive inking
- notebooks in notebooks in... like folders in folders in...
- intuitive