EverNote Technical Preview for Windows Mobile rocks!
You read that correctly, EverNote slipped a technical preview of a Windows Mobile application in a couple of weeks ago and reader Gordon Cahill sent me an email and said I really needed to check it out. That’s what I’ve now done and Gordon is right, the Windows Mobile version of EverNote is an awesome program that blows that other mobile note-taking solution OneNote out of the water. It’s hard to figure out where to start explaining why it’s so good so I’ll just start at the beginning.
First of all you need to have the desktop version of EverNote 2.2 installed before trying to install the WM version. There is a 60 day free trial of EverNote 2.2 so that’s not hard, although you can never see how much this program will eventually cost you until you install it and then click the purchase link in the help file. It’s $49.95 which is not a bad price for such a full-featured note-taking application but EverNote should be up front about that.
Once you have EverNote installed on the desktop you can register and download the Windows Mobile preview. There is both an EXE version for installing through the Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) and an OTA version (CAB) that can be downloaded and installed directly to the WM device. Once it’s installed you fire it up and it needs to create a database on an external storage card so you can sync it to the desktop version. This is where the experience really shines as you don’t even need to go through that ridiculous WMDC for syncing the database which is very good indeed.
What makes this preview version so cool is that you can create four different kinds of notes on the WM device, text notes, ink notes, photos from the camera notes, and audio notes. Tablet guy that I am I am very impressed with how good the ink notes are and the notes shot on the camera are great too. The program provides a nice interface although it’s not optimized for VGA screens yet. There is a good selection of filters so that you can handle a large volume of notes on the small screen, just like on the desktop version. You can filter so that the following notes are displayed separately from the others:
- Web Clips
- Outlook Clips
- Excel Clips
- Word Clips
- Digital Ink
- Flagged
- To-Do
- Done
- Images
- Personal
- Other
These are all the default categories from the desktop version so it’s clear that EverNote wanted you to be able to work with your large desktop database on the PDA. This is done by storing the database on the external storage card, in my case the Mini-SD card. I popped it into a card reader and plugged it into the desktop and in EverNote there I set up the initial synchronization. This took just a few seconds and when I popped the Mini-SD card into the Advantage the entire note database was there and ready to go. This sync method means you have complete control over the process and can run it whenever you want. It’s simple yet effective and is a great way to go to avoid WMDC problems. Ink notes look great and I even clipped a web note on the desktop that displays perfectly on the WM device, including hyperlinks which work fine.
The technical preview is free as it should be so if you use EverNote or are looking for a solid note-taking solution on both a desktop and a WM device you need to check this out. Note that the WM is a technical preview so it’s not without risk but so far I’ve had no problems with it.
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No vectoring issues then?
Hows the handwriting recognition?
It looks like a similar experience to that which I had using OneNote on the Everun. It was OK when you enter text at the bottom of the screen becuase you can rest your palm on the frame.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBW7_3UdGjA
Steve.
Steve, vectoring is a product of the hardware, not the software. EverNote works as well as any other application built for inking, the HWR is very good and it can give OneNote a run for its money. The endless roll of notes is a great concept borrowed from the Apple Newton which is not surprising since the team that developed EverNote were the Newton team from back when.
What rocks about EverNote is the great way in which this preview works on WM devices. It is great to finally be able to see ink notes on the WM side which OneNote Mobile can’t do.
Yup. As you can see i’ve tested OneNote. I’m also well aware that vectoring is a hardware related issue!!!
I’m asking if the hardware gives you vectoring issues that make the software unusable?
Steve
I am confused by your question then, Steve. Are you referring to the PC side of EverNote or the WM side? Again, the particular device will vector, not the software.
Although the site says you “have” to have the desktop version installed, I can’t see why if you don’t need to sync to the desktop. I have installed the mobile version (from CAB) and it works perfectly
The main draw of the WM version is the ability to sync all of your notes over to the WM device. I think that’s why they say that.
Hi James.
The Advantage (and all other touchscreen WM5 devices?) are touchscreen (passive) and not ‘inking’ screens. (active digitisers) right? Is the screen hardware going to be a major problem for this ink-focused software or do you think people will be happy inking on a passive touchscreen?
I’m just wondering if common WM5 platforms are the right choice for this software.
Steve.
Aw James!
Last week when the news broke about the free for a day EverNote I tried in vain to find a good comparison review. Nada.
I already have OneNote 2007 and wanted to see if there was anything different to make me ditch my investment to grab EverNote. Now you say the WM experience is better?!?!?! Argh!
Like you said in your post about WMDC, I like the integration (or supposed integration) of Windows products, but OneNote Mobile isn’t ready for Prime Time IMHO.
At least it’s still on sale until the end of December. Guess I better download the trial :S
Alas after waiting for mobile Evernote for years, it only supports WM5 and WM6 devices and not my beloved iPaq 4700 running 2003 OS. That said, it does look like they have done a very good job. Evernote is currently one of my favorite apps. I love it on my UMPC. I think it is hard to compare OneNote to Evernote as they really are targeted at different markets. I have never been able to use Onenote. It just doesn’t suite my needs.
In case no one picked up on this, there is no recognition on the WM app. It captures only, all the recognition happens on the Desktop after you sync. -Makes sense to me. Another thing Evernote neewbies might not understand is that if you capture images all the text in that image will be recognized and searchable. This includes handwriting as well as printed text.
Next year they are taking the platform live as well as offering a Mac client. All devices will sync to your online account. I can’t wait.
Thanks All for your good words about our software. As an EverNote staffer, I would like to clarify a few points.
1. Irrespective of the platform, we see EverNote as a way to keep *all* user data in any format.
2. So, we pay special attention to easy capturing, rendering, search and organization of all types of content.
3. On the desktop, by far the most popular data types are typed notes and Web clips (for users with tablets, digital pen&paper devices and such, handwritten notes are also very prominent). To facilitate data capturing, EverNote has special Web and Mail clipper plug-ins for IE/FF/Outlook/Thunderbird, and a Universal Clipper which allows capturing selected content from any application and, additionally, capturing screen snapshots as images (with some advanced markup capability).
4. Smartphones, expecially Pocket PC Phones, are very rich “capturing devices”, so we are doing our best to support their key capturing features: camera snapshots, ink, and voice.
5. We don’t perceive EverNote an ink-centric application, but 18 years of team’s digital ink expertise helps us to offer quality solution. This version of EverNote (both on Pocket PC and on Windows PC) features new patent-pending ink capturing and rendering technology which, in our opinion, makes a serios step forward compared with other technologies currently available on the market. To illustrate this, we would propose to view *on the desktop* the handwriting captured *on the Pocket PC screen* (which has a much lower screen quality and resolution compared with, say, Tablet PC).
5. Yes, Aaron is right: all types of recognition, the “AIR” (Advanced Image Recognition) indexing of images with typed or handwritten text and the “ANR” (Advanced Notes Recognition) recognition of digital ink notes are currently available only in the full desktop version. However, indexes are transferred to the WM device once a user copies the database back to that device; at that time, both the images and the digital ink notes become searchable by keywords.
6. If the advanced features are of limited interest, it is possible to use the Windows Mobile version of EverNote separately; still, it has been our thinking that EverNote’s goal is to keep *all* your data with you at *all* times and on *any* device. So, we strongly encourage the use of both the desktop and the mobile version.
7. The 60-day trial version of EverNote on our website does not fully expire after 60 days; in fact, only its advanced features (AIR, ANR) expire and the basic functionality works perpetually.
Thanks for reading this.
LK