I’ve been a long time Evernote user and have tried storing everything from receipts for purchases to code snippets in it. Today I figured I’d give you a quick walk through of my likes and dislikes of Evernote.

The Good

One of the absolutely standout features of Evernote is the text recognition on images. Seriously take a picture of a business card with your web camera let it upload and sync (faster if you’re a paying customer) and Evernote will be able to do text search within that image. Absolutely amazing and not something I’ve seen repeated anywhere else.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIgWh2YWMVY&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Another huge plus for Evernote is that it is cross platform. I don’t just mean that it works on OS X and Windows, I mean that it also works on iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile. Yeah you can access you’re Evernote data pretty much anywhere, which means you can also take notes anywhere that will end up on your desktop. If your not a Mac centric person or need to work across multiple platforms then Evernote will be the one to stick with.

As noted above Evernote is everywhere and syncs automagically everywhere for free. Yeah that’s right Evernote will give you web sync at no charge, sure there is a monthly transfer limit but it’s free.

Man Evernote is everywhere
Man Evernote is everywhere

The Annoying

One thing I find annoying about Evernote is the fact that ⌘-F doesn’t search your whole Evernote library just the note you’re on. Since searching your whole library does in fact search inside the text of individual notes I think that ⌘-F should search the whole library again not just single note. I’ll admit that other may have a different opinion, you’re just wrong.

Evernote's search dialogue
Evernote’s search dialogue

Browser integration is another issue I have with Evernote. Safari and Firefox are not the only browsers on a Mac so why does it only offer options for those two browsers plugins/extensions? I suppose that this only comes up for me since I’m a full time Chrome user but still get on board with the popular web browsers out there peeps.

Yes Evernote is free but they have to make money somehow and if you’re not a paying customer they try to do it with ads in the desktop application. I honestly can’t fault them for having a business plan and executing it, way to many web businesses try to figure out how to make money on their awesome idea only at the end of it. I still find the ads annoying, especially on my Netbook. On a 13″ screen the ads take up space but nothing to be worried about. On a 10.5″ screen you see one tag and thats kinda it. Maybe they found that they really push Netbook owners into the purchase with that little ‘feature’.

I might be able to see something
I might be able to see something

It’s a fact that most people hate autoplay music on a site (or video for that matter). I would think that this would also stand true for desktop apps. Well Evernote has autoplay video on it’s install screen. I had totally forgotten about this till I reinstalled it on my Netbook to get the screenshot above. Suddenly I was scrambling to figure out where the sound was coming from so I didn’t wake up my kid. Sure have a video but don’t inflict it on me unless I start playing it.

Awesome autoplay video
Awesome autoplay video

The final thing I’ll cite today is that Evernote doesn’t integrate with OS X services. Sure it has system wide shortcuts but the contextual services menu of OS X is the way to go for this type of stuff, at least in my opinion.

At The End of It All

So now we’re wrapping up the review and I’m going to recommend that you use Evernote if you work on more than one platform. There really isn’t a comparable option that I’ve seen for working across devices that compares.

Next up I’ll be looking at Yojimbo.