Best Program for Taking Notes in Class?

Umm... MS Word? Pages? Textedit? Appleworks? Openoffice? Are you after a simple word processor or something that you can easily draw diagrams with? Any other requirements?

 

Dixon Ticonderoga is a nice old program.

 

Word Notebook View. (Only in Office 2004)
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/word2004/images/ftrsfull_word_01.gif

 

What about Stickies?

 

i second this, works great for me, because i take bulleted notes all the time

 

Pages!

 

I am a fan of recording lectures while also taking notes. That way you can still write the notes from the board but also pay more attention to the lecture part. If you miss something, just listen back after class. Maybe even "license" the recordings to your lazy classmates for some $$ ;P

 

I take LOADS of bulleted notes in class. So far word hasnt worked out that well, and pages seems like a good prospect, allthough I havent had the chance to actually take notes with it.

I have toyed with the idea of using inspiration to take notes, but have never gotten around to doing it. what I'm really looking for is something that handles bullets REALLY well. thats all I need.

 

Circus Ponies Notebook, a great organizing program for just about anything including for college. Simply it resembles a basic spiral notebook, that I use to not only take notes but also to store a class syllabus, schedule of assignments, even the files I created for assignments like reports and such. It simply can be a simple program or a vast one serving all your needs. The price isn't bad either, $49.95 or since your a student you can pick up the academic version for only $29.95, and its worth every penny. Just head to their website and they have a 30 day fully-fuctional free trial that you can see for yourself if it will suit your needs. But overall it was out before Microsoft inlcuded Notebook functionality into Word, and still does it better than Microsoft Office 04.

http://www.circusponies.com/pages.aspx?page=products

 

I ablosutely love the word notebook view, but what i would really like is if microsoft would release OneNote for mac. That really is a powerful program

 

Yeah, it is called a pen and piece of paper.

 

That has been what gone to exacpt I use a mechical pencil and paper. I used to take notes on my laptop but I quite using after I finished with my lower lv classes. It kind of hard to type note for math and engineering classes. I have to draw to many diagram and to many formals. Mind you only another engineer can really even follow my notes since they are full of short hand.

Back when I did use my computer MS word work out to be just fine and really made some great notes when you use bullets and what not to keep them orgizned. Plus it help out other in the class of those who wanted my a copy of my notes. much easier to just give them a word file.

 

I also use MS Word's Notebook view to take notes and record lectures in some classes (although I agree in classes like math, nothing beats a pencil and paper) I record the lecture (most of it...my prof can go off on tangents sometimes while simultaneously typing notes. I go back afterwards and fill in the rest while listening to the recorded lecture. This also helps me review what I learned for the day and it seems to be a working strategy so far!

 

OmniOutliner

http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnioutliner/

It came with my REV.C powerbook, I can't live without it during meetings.

There also is an rtf export function.

Have fnu!

 

You could hook this or to your PB and record away. It would be better than trying to record from the PB microphone. I've always found note-taking to be useless when trying to decipher it later on. Sometimes you really miss key points in notetaking.

 

I prefer a simple text editor, and at the moment my editor of choise is TextWrangler, which recently became freeware (for non commercial use)

 

For right now, I'm gonna have to add another vote for Office 2004's note view. I like how the layout actually looks like a page of note paper... Nice touch Has anyone heard about that new MS product though, called like... "One Note"? I'm not sure of the exact name, but I've seen some flash ads floating around about it... I guess there's a 30-day free trial for it too. If anyone has tried it and has a few impressions, please let us know.

 

Griffin italk and iPod is a possibility.I have that set up for notetaking but haven't used it in a lecture yet so don't know about ambient noise etc.

 

I use the iTalk and my 3G 20Gb iPod. Works great for me. I just whack that sucker on my lectuer's lectern and record it. Thats the best way. It wont pick up from far away.

 

I only just started taking notes using my iBook last semester at uni (previously it was just pen and paper). I used VoodooPad Lite, which I was very happy with and suited my needs exactly. Also, its free. For any sketches/diagrams I used Appleworks drawing functionality and saved as/converted to .pdf then put it in my notes in VPL.

Whatever you decide on, all you really need is basic word processing functionality for taking notes. Its up to you whether you want sketching/drawing support, and whether you want one program to handle everything (notes + sketch/draw) or have a few programs work together as I did.

 

what subject? if you need maths use LaTeX (TeX). It's free and prints the best.

 

...or Lyx, nice WYSIWYG LaTeX editor...

 

i have been using Circus Ponies Notebook for about a week now and i am really having fun with it. my only issue is that my teachers jump around so much it's kind of a pain but its easy enough to flip back and forth. i just create a temp notebook, type everything in it then go back and start copying and pasting.. works like a charm. i can't wait to get 2.0 because it seems to have more polish than this one and a bunch of new features i could use.