I've been a fan of having a personal diary ever since I bought an iPhone and noticed there were plenty of apps that were awesome and beautiful for that; I always wanted to be able to write an entry on the go, and the iPhone and it's plethora of apps finally seemed to offer that.

So I went on and reviewed a few apps, until I finally established with Momento. The app is incredibly aesthetic and at the time offered alot more functionality than any of the other apps I reviewed (it creates entries from social feeds, for example, which is pretty awesome).

One of the things that I quite didn't like from Momento was that, even though it offered the functionality of adding tabs and photos to your entries, tab administration lacking AND that photos added to the entries were considerably degraded; this forced me to keep a copy of that photo, because the one saved inside the app looked awful if extracted for later view on a PC (this I actually understood: if you keep adding 3-4 photos per entry, each one 1-2mgs in size, the app will soon eat up most of your device's memory. However, it still bothered me).

So then the iPad came out, and when I finally got my hands on one, I was pretty disappointed that after months (and eventually years, because as of today I'm still waiting) of a user-requested native version for the iPad the developer's response was "we're working on it". After more than 12 months of reading this in their blog I became impatient and started looking for alternatives. (hellowwww, alternativeto.net)

So then I stumbled with Day One. When I first reviewed Day One, it was nothing compared to Momento... it lacked way too many features and only excelled in simplicity. However, after almost two years of development, the app became pretty mature and already included a Mac, iPad and iPhone/iPod version...all of which you could sync via iCloud of Dropbox. I loooooved the sync features and the simplicity in the app...BUT it lacked tags and photos. At this point I was so fed up with Momento that it didn't matter and I decided to give it a try. However, I decided to start saving the posts which included pictures in Evernote (which I started using after the mayor update it had for iOS platform). I really hadn't considered using Evernote for personal-entry writing, but after being "forced" to use it this way, it suddenly blew my mind that it had EVERYTHING I had always asked for in a personal diary app:

• you could add photos to each entry WITHOUT losing quality of the photo
• you could date-stamp each entry easily (ALT+SHIFT+D)
• you could sync between MANY devices and BOTH MAC AND WINDOWS PLATFORMS!!! (no current decent iOS diary app offeres this, as far as I know)
• you could manage tags like a pro...because if there's something Evernote is good at, is managing tags
• you could share your entries if you wanted to!!! (pro-account only)
• you could encrypt (password-protect) your entries via a simple select-text + shortcut (I loved this...because it meant you can encrypt only PART of your entry, and are not forced to encrypt ALL the entry)...although being able to encrypt whole notes and/or notebooks is a highly requested feature that I hope they include in the future.

So even though Evernote is clearly not designed to be used as a personal diary (it lacks the aesthetic concept of such) it pretty much complies with EVERYTHING else you would want from a personal-diary-writing app.

Honestly...I wasn't expecting this... I really wasn't expecting to finding everything I needed in an app designed to clip notes from the web and such... but I did!!! And honestly, I don't think I'm going back. I mean, Day One will probably sooner or later include tags and photo-import into their entries, but it will still lack the ability to sync to a Windows machine (I use Windows at work, so...). And Momento might one day finally wake up and release an iPad app, but it would still lack a desktop app to write to and keep on degrading images.

In other words, Evernote is light years ahead of these two apps (and most others I've reviewed), EXCEPT on the aesthetics and concept, which, honestly...is the least of my concerns now that I've finally found functionality in this app.

[Edited by mandin82, February 23]

[Edited by mandin82, February 23]

One of the main advantages of Evernote is, that you can search and find text in thousands of notes very quickly. But there are many apps like PNotes portable or CherryTree portable, which have a similar text-search-function not much slower than with Evernote.

But I know no other application than evernote, which is able to find text in pictures embedded in a note. This in the background fully automated OCR-text-recognition is a very unique and excellent Evernote-feature. In the open-source-brother-application NeverNote (=NixNote) and in OneNote 2007 I could not find text in embedded pictures.
The only feature I miss in Evernote is, that it is not available in a portable version for usage on business computers without admin rights. For this purpose I must open Evernote online in a Firefox-tab or use CherryTree (with pictures from clipboard) or PNotes (without pictures in notes).

No portable Evernote version because there is no permission from the publisher

On http://portableapps.com/node/22217 there have been created portable versions of Evernote developed under the PortableApps.com format and for use in the Portableapps.com Platform. But the developers had no permission from the publisher to repackage the freeware. So unfortunatelly the link to the illegally packaged software had to be removed by mod JTH. But very many people need a portable Evernote version, which can be executed on a DropBox-, TeamDrive- or USB-stick-folder. Both DropBox and TeamDrive can be executed portable, but only DropBox can sync through all business proxy servers. TeamDrive cannot sync through some proxy servers.

• TeamDrive

Best portable Note-Apps CherryTree and PNotes cannot be used on SmartPhones

People, who have no admin rights on their business computers must use PNotes Portable or CherryTree portable until now. PNotes Portable is quite good, similar to Evernote, but not able to use images in the Notes. PNotes is able to sync the notes with an FTP-account and supports automatically working internet-links and you can search with tags and words in the text with very quick results similar to evernote:

• PNotes

In CherryTree you can save big notebooks with a hierarcical and tagged note-structure in ctd-files and CherryTree is able to paste images from the clipboard to the notes.

• CherryTree

Nevernote with Evernote-SmartPhone-access waits for a developer making a portable version

The best app similar to Evernote is its Open Source-Brother-App NeverNote (= NixNote). It is able to be synchronized with the Evernote account and able to use images and rich formatting features in the Notes. All functions are nearly equal to those of Evernote. Neither for EverNote nor for NeverNote exists a portable version until Feb. 2012. Only Evernote and NeverNote (NixNote) have access to the notes from all SmartPhones, CherryTree and PNotes only can be used on desktop computers. Because NixNote is Open Source it should be legal to make a portable NixNote version.

So I suggest to make a portable version of NeverNote = NixNote

• NixNote .

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/nevernote/

The new Windows desktop client, written in C++ is outstanding. They completely rebuilt the application from the ground up and got rid of the bloat and slowness. Everything, including the UI and startup time is vastly improved. If you didn't like the desktop version of Evernote before, but you liked the idea, you owe it to yourself to try the new version.

I like the concept behind Evernote, but the editor is total crap. If I type a note where I only use different levels of indented lists, the formatting ends up with different fonts and different sizes when I try to see the note somewhere else (on the android app or copy/paste as RTF).

I'm on the verge of giving it up and find an alternative with better editor (more reliable formatting).