Sticky Notes? Post-It Notes? Whatever! A Quick Comparision of Desktop Note Programs

Sticky notes! Post-it notes! Whatever you want to call them, a spark from my past randomly reminded me of their usefulness. When the internet and chatting became all the rage, I remember downloading random applications that friends referred to me (over chat, of course). I can still see my desktop covered in a yellow blanket of electronic Post-It notes. It was awesome. And come to think of it… it was also very green. Hey, I was green before Al Gore uncovered an Inconvenient Truth! yikes, I just dated myself… Are these electronic sticky notes still around?

As incoming tasks and projects built up more and more at work, I wanted to find a functional, easy-to-use sticky notes program to help me keep it together. Um, I don’t mean that in the Joker locked away at Arkham Asylum way. To help me keep everything organized, how’s that? Anyway, I decided to stick with freeware since the best things in life… are free (as they say). My favorite program teeter-totters between Stickies and StickyPad. I have trouble deciding things, indecisive nature, remember? But here are the programs I found and tried, knocked out with their own quick overview.

ATNotes

A few of the pros:

• Organization is a breeze with a simple interface and ability to put notes into folders
• Auto-sizing note windows
• Ease of deleting and retrieving deleted notes
• Alarms (set a note to sound or perform an action when you need a reminder)

A few of the cons:

• Difficult to spot where your new note pops up (click the screen shot to see if you can easily spot it)
• Inability to perform any actions from right-clicking the note
• Fonts are set within the note, options for font type, style and size are not available

MoRUN.net Stickers Lite

A few of the pros:

• Adjustable auto save feature (save notes every x minutes)
• Many options to customize the look of your notes (size, background and font color, etc.)
• Customize your hot keys
• Ability to send notes and save notes as pictures

A few of the cons:

• Need to restart program to view the effects of changing the notes’ border
• Can get a bit overwhelming with all the different options and functions
• Could use a better looking interface; the bold and outrageous colors can also sometimes be a bit harsh on the eyes

Stickies

A few of the pros:

• Easy to organize with the Manage Stickies interface
• Put images in your notes and change the image of your notes with skins
• Set an alarm to go off with a note
• Ability to select multiple notes
• Create bullet points and check boxes within the notes
• Ability to send notes

A few of the cons:

• Each new sticky note color is the same, you need to manually change it to another color afterward (not a huge deal) Looks like there is an option! A bit tricky to find: Options>Appearance>In the “Default” style setting, click “Sticky Colour”>Random or Random Set. Thanks to creator Tom Revell for the instruction!
• Could possibly get a bit overwhelming with all its features and functions

StickyPad

A few of the pros:

• Pop-up interface when you click on the icon in the task bar (it’s small, it’s pretty, it’s a great way pick what I want to do rather than just immediately opening a new note)
• Well designed notes and interface making easy to quickly understand how to use it (“pin” notes to the desktop by pressing the pin icon, duh)
• Set reminders for notes and ability to email a note
• Very simple and easy to use

A few of the cons:

• Not as many functions and features as other programs
• It’s sort of useful and neat that I can pick the shortcuts on I want to show up on the pop-up interface, but isn’t that what my “Quick Launch” is for?

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