Free note-taking software?

[CubanCorona]

I'm looking a simple and intuitive program for taking notes in law school classes. The notes will consist mostly of text with simple markup and the occasional chart or diagram.

Any favorites?

 

[Schadenfroh]

TomBoy might be able to do the trick.

 

[WildHorse]

Unless you're some kind of super typist, I'd go with a trusty mechanical pencil on paper that you lay out according to the Cornell System for taking notes.

That works best for me anyway.

You don't even need their special form for it, just utilize any normal lined paper as though it was a Cornell System form. You can print the freely-available Cornell System form out, but unnecessary.

 

[nova2]

consider this wiki style text editor called zim
https://launchpad.net/zim
http://pardus-larus.student.utwente.nl/~pardus/projects/zim/index.shtml

how to install zim on windows
http://pardus-larus.student.utwente.nl/~pardus/projects/zim/docs/Zim/Install/Windows.html

 

[corkyg]

I thought that was what WordPad was for?

 

[ryema22]

Not free, but Microsoft OneNote is worth every penny. I've used it for my law classes all year long. The "home and student' edition is $59 on newegg, but you might be able to get an even better educational discount through your school.

 

[TheoPetro]

Originally posted by: ryema22
Not free, but Microsoft OneNote is worth every penny. I've used it for my law classes all year long. The "home and student' edition is $59 on newegg, but you might be able to get an even better educational discount through your school.

seconded. I have used it for the past 3 semesters and I love it. This semester im using it for all of my classes. It is nice to have all your notes for every class on one laptop. as long as I have my laptop I can study anywhere. MAKE SURE YOU BACK IT UP. The first semester I used it I lost my drive and all my nots for all my classes. Like any sensitive data you better be backing it up. Currently I have it synced to a flash drive and to the HDD on my lappy and to the HDD on my desktop. No lost data for me again.

 

[JeffKuhn]

I used to use OneNote, until I found KeyNote (http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/Keynote/keynote.html). It's free, simple, and powerful. It is no longer under development/supported, but I use it daily and have never had any problems.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: TheoPetro

Originally posted by: ryema22
Not free, but Microsoft OneNote is worth every penny. I've used it for my law classes all year long. The "home and student' edition is $59 on newegg, but you might be able to get an even better educational discount through your school.

seconded. I have used it for the past 3 semesters and I love it. This semester im using it for all of my classes. It is nice to have all your notes for every class on one laptop. as long as I have my laptop I can study anywhere. MAKE SURE YOU BACK IT UP. The first semester I used it I lost my drive and all my nots for all my classes. Like any sensitive data you better be backing it up. Currently I have it synced to a flash drive and to the HDD on my lappy and to the HDD on my desktop. No lost data for me again.

Does OneNote offer an extremely fast way of typing in math equations laced with superscripts, subscripts, various greek letters, math symbols, etc?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: TheoPetro

Originally posted by: ryema22
Not free, but Microsoft OneNote is worth every penny. I've used it for my law classes all year long. The "home and student' edition is $59 on newegg, but you might be able to get an even better educational discount through your school.

seconded. I have used it for the past 3 semesters and I love it. This semester im using it for all of my classes. It is nice to have all your notes for every class on one laptop. as long as I have my laptop I can study anywhere. MAKE SURE YOU BACK IT UP. The first semester I used it I lost my drive and all my nots for all my classes. Like any sensitive data you better be backing it up. Currently I have it synced to a flash drive and to the HDD on my lappy and to the HDD on my desktop. No lost data for me again.

Does OneNote offer an extremely fast way of typing in math equations laced with superscripts, subscripts, various greek letters, math symbols, etc?

Unfortunately, no. It does offer to do math equations with MS Equation Editor, but it sucks for the most part. Atleast, I haven't had much luck with it. But I do agree with them--OneNote is absolutely wonderful. Between OneNote and Essential PIM, that covers all of my note taking & tasking software.

I love Essential PIM (EPIM) as you can do a tree view of all your notes--branching notes is so wonderful, I wish OneNote had it.

EDIT: Do you know of a program that does? If you can find one that you can take fast math notation in, you can screen cap (windows key + S) or export into OneNote. You can also print to OneNote, and it does a good job of it.

 

[CP5670]

Unless you're some kind of super typist, I'd go with a trusty mechanical pencil on paper that you lay out according to the Cornell System for taking notes.

If it's mainly text that the OP needs to write down, typing may be a better option. I know I can type much faster than I can write, although creating diagrams is probably easier on paper.

Does OneNote offer an extremely fast way of typing in math equations laced with superscripts, subscripts, various greek letters, math symbols, etc?

I use Mathematica's frontend for this and prefer to the TeX variants I've seen for just this reason. It has a few odd bugs and the files it creates are (internally) messy but you can write math expressions in it very quickly, and it takes minimal effort to get used to. I use it more for doing stuff at home though, as I take very few notes in classes and generally don't take a computer there.