Ask TUAW: What's your favorite note-taking app?

I was pretty impressed with Aquamind's Notetaker which I used on my iBook for the last 2 years of college. I like the fact that it's all organized within one virtual notebook, so I had all my classes on tabs and everything was in one file. (Which is not really true, since you can do Show Package Contents on your notebook and actually see separate files for each page, but still ... for appearance sake it's one notebook.)

I use OmniOutliner all of the time in my Ph.D. seminars. The "Note" and "Attach" features of OO are great and I like being able to collapse my notes into dates and topics so the screen doesn't scroll. For instance, when my prof gave a presentation on houses in ancient Rome, I took notes in OO and then I downloaded her Powerpoint and attached it to the topic level note. The "Note" feature is really nice for processing information. When I get home and go over my notes, if I come up with thoughts or questions about a particular item, rather than adding to my actual notes, I just attach a note to it. OO displays a small icon to the left to let me know there is a note attached. OmniOutliner is also really great for preparing presentations because of the way it integrates with Keynote. When I am taking notes from books and articles about various aspects of a topic, the notes export easily to automatically create a Keynote presentation. All I have to do is configure the transitions and builds and set the theme and I am ready to present. So, all in all, I think OO is the most flexible option for organizing notes and synthesizing the information. I can't imagine going back to note taking in Word.

What's sorta bad is that I still use vi to take notes during meetings or when I need to jot something down real quick. It's small, and I know how to use it waaaaay too well from being the unix admin/geek that I really am. I'll always use it, if it's requiring drawings or something else I always have a note book with me for that.

Don`t forget Curio ( http://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/ ) the best mac app ever!

I'm surprised that the original post expresses dissatisfaction with the notebook function of Word 2004, becuase I'm a graduate student and use it every day in class on my iBook. I've never had a problem with it. What's more, I like that if there's a hilarious exchange among classmates, or a professor shows a movie or plays a sound clip, that I can just use the sound recording toolbar and my iBook's built-in mic to get all that sound into my computer for later playback. I hasten to add that Word is the only M$ product I'll let befoul my precious Mac, and I've never had trouble with it.

Sidenote is a wonderful app to take quick notes, and i am quite surprised not to hear anyone out there mention it. Of course, VoodoPad is a wonderful app too.

I'm a licensed owner of OmniOutliner, StickyBrain, and CircusPonies Notebook. And I've tried all the others (Devon, Hog Bay, whatever.) These days, 90 percent of the time, I fire up Circus Ponies. There are some improvements I'd like to see, but it's the closest match to replacing a paper notebook.

I use notesguru. It hasn't been updated in a while, and may never be, but it allows quick note taking, and has a superfast search. It's really small and simple, but perfect for taking notes in meetings or in class.

I use StickyBrain since it will sync notes to my Palm so I have everything with me as I go. I would like it if I had the ability to make sub items of a note though... like Omni does. I tried doing this with Shadow since it did the Palm sync thing too. But it had it's notes size lmitations - and time it took to get around. Both apps I would suggest others to take a look at. StickyBrain: www.chronosnet.com Shadow: www.codejedi.com

vi and/or vim both come preinstalled with osx and can be accessed from the terminal. Once you learn the shortcuts (and you pretty much have to or your not going to get very far) you will never take notes faster!