I had the same experience with Circus Ponies, David. [God, how many programs I've tried or used.]

NoteTaker (by Aquaminds) has an intermediate learning curve. This is another program where a B&amp;W print-out of their PDF manual is useful.

But you know how you can come back to programs you've abandoned four or five years ago and everything about them seems so static and worn-out?

No so with NoteTaker. They have a free NoteTaker Viewer (something like that) that allows Mac, Win, and (I think) Linux aficionados without NoteTaker to view the notebooks. No forced upgrade path.

I did a Spotlight for a lost doc and discovered it was in an old NoteTaker notebook. I was really shocked at how easy the notebook I created in 2002 was to access, understand, export from, and USE.

MacJournal, which I use, relies on the organization in the left panel. NT has the look and feel of a real notebook with section tabs, an index of the entire notebook with page numbers, great Services and contextual menu help, and so many features that I'd forgotten.

This was a recent re-discovery, and I am seriously considering going through the pain of switching over to it again. The secret to NoteTaker, if anyone is interested, is in creating templates up front for the types of material you'll be dumping into it. Doing it on the fly as you bumble through the program is a PITA. I am a big web clipper and I hate the sprawling mess of html and other detritus that clipping can produce in MacJournal and other programs. NT templates puts a halt to that.

Also, NT is dead simple with audio annotations on the fly.

Aquaminds is also extending their server product to work on the iPad, which I dont own. I'll be anxious to see if that server can still be your own computer as it is now. [No Facebook-like interference in your life.]

I really understand David's thrust to get the best tool experience for himself. I've ricocheted between Mac and Win for two decades, and I finally decided that the paperwhite screen on the Mac is the reason why I stay.

I can read for 24 hours straight on a Mac, with a little help from Mr. Coffee and Mrs. Wine. I fall asleep reading a cream page in a book with 10 pt type that is badly inked within 15 minutes. This is such a sadness for me. I have a library of 5,000+ books that I will never get rid of. I love books, the paper, the arc of an open book in front of me, the smell of ink. I own a Kindle and an iRex, but the light-grey/dark-grey contrast bugs me, and I can't read easily on a plane or in a pub. Don't have an iPad yet, but some e-reader with a white screen will eventually appeal to me.

I'm going on and on about this in the event there is a Mac user who would like the One-Note experience that David writes about in this post. NoteTaker is one product to look at. View the tutorial first to get an idea about it. (aquaminds.com) and no, I have zip to do with the company.