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The best app for note taking in iPad is:

  • Notebooks for iPad

    Votes: 17 4.6%
  • UPAD

    Votes: 28 7.5%
  • neu.Notes

    Votes: 1 0.3%
  • Penultimate

    Votes: 65 17.5%
  • FastFinga

    Votes: 1 0.3%
  • Noterize

    Votes: 7 1.9%
  • Noteshelf

    Votes: 49 13.2%
  • Note Taker HD

    Votes: 43 11.6%
  • CourseNotes

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • PhatPad

    Votes: 2 0.5%
  • Notebooks for iPad

    Votes: 8 2.2%
  • WritePad for iPad

    Votes: 4 1.1%
  • Other (Please mention)

    Votes: 147 39.5%

  • Total voters
    372
Yeah ... I think the poll needs to be updated (i.e. redone) ... that was done such a long time ago ... my vote has changed ... and besides that, there are a lot of new apps that were not around when that poll was done!

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Agreed ... reminds me of Note Taker HD a little.

Now that's a horrible and cluttered UI.
 
Is there an app that can combine typed notes and handwritten notes/drawings on the same page?

Sometimes I want to type down notes and at the same time write down equations or draw molecule structures.

MANY of the note taking apps have this capability. Look at Notabiltiy, Notes Plus for starters.
 
Anyone play with WritePad for iPad yet?

I just stumbled across this one, but haven't bought it yet. This looks pretty nice, just wondering if anyone has heard about it yet or owns it and can tell if it is indeed worth the 9.99 price tag.

Looks OK but way too many shortcuts and gesturing commands for me to remember, lol. No audio recording ability from what I can see as well.
 
Looks OK but way too many shortcuts and gesturing commands for me to remember, lol. No audio recording ability from what I can see as well.

It's not really what I think it was before I bought it. The sole purpose is handwriting recognition that transforms into nothing but text. It's really a strange app to use. I wouldn't recommend it at all.
 
It's not really what I think it was before I bought it. The sole purpose is handwriting recognition that transforms into nothing but text. It's really a strange app to use. I wouldn't recommend it at all.

D'oh got to you too late..... i concur. 7notesHD Premium is way better. If you add the evernote sync add-on then it is a potential replacement for Notability. Although I really love notability sometimes I want the handwriting recognition.
 
D'oh got to you too late..... i concur. 7notesHD Premium is way better. If you add the evernote sync add-on then it is a potential replacement for Notability. Although I really love notability sometimes I want the handwriting recognition.

Yeah, that was a wasted 10 spot. But I can safely recommend NotesPlus, and Remarks is a very very close second, but NotesPlus has so many awesome features.
 
RE: Notesplus. It seems to get a bit hammered in the reviews of its most recent release... you seem to love it.

Does the handwriting recognition add in cost much? Have you got it? Does it work well?
 
What I have found to be the best is a combo of pages and Noteability, using mostly pages, but I'm sure some people probably vehemently disagree. I personally like Pages because of the iCloud integration

Just my 2 cents :D
 
Still comparing Remarks and Notes Plus myself (and I blame you, sk1wbw, for my dilemma :p).

I've seen a few Notes Plus reviews of their version 2. The interface then looked a lot like Apple's notes, and I'm sorry they replaced it with the numerous boxes and alu-styles frames in version 3. I simply can't get used to it. I must agree though, that it has many cool features.
Remarks does have less features, but maybe I can live with what they do offer. The working environment is so much cleaner, no clutter nor waste of space on margins and stuff - every pixel is put to use for taking notes. I've put up my request for music paper types (notebar and guitar tablature) - the developer was very responsive. I hope they'll include it on a future update.

I'm currently testing Dropbox syncing, exporting, uploading etc. So any feedback on a good practice here would be very welcome (if not too much off topic...).
 
Still comparing Remarks and Notes Plus myself (and I blame you, sk1wbw, for my dilemma :p).

I've seen a few Notes Plus reviews of their version 2. The interface then looked a lot like Apple's notes, and I'm sorry they replaced it with the numerous boxes and alu-styles frames in version 3. I simply can't get used to it. I must agree though, that it has many cool features.
Remarks does have less features, but maybe I can live with what they do offer. The working environment is so much cleaner, no clutter nor waste of space on margins and stuff - every pixel is put to use for taking notes. I've put up my request for music paper types (notebar and guitar tablature) - the developer was very responsive. I hope they'll include it on a future update.

I'm currently testing Dropbox syncing, exporting, uploading etc. So any feedback on a good practice here would be very welcome (if not too much off topic...).

Oh blame me! Haha, I have almost every single one of these apps and honestly, NotesPlus and Remarks are the two best. They're the only ones I have used lately. I play with Upad and some others which are nice, but nowhere near the functioanlity of NotesPlus.

BTW, what iPad are you using?
 
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Regarding the handwriting recognition with Notes Plus ... I write in cursive (a dying breed it seems) and write fairly neat. I do not really print, but Notes Plus handwriting conversion to text is very good.

Unless you make periods at the end of a sentence kind of larger than jot a quick "dot", then it may miss that ... and run two sentences together. It's not Perfect when I'm in a hurry, but it's very good.
 
Regarding the handwriting recognition with Notes Plus ... I write in cursive (a dying breed it seems) and write fairly neat. I do not really print, but Notes Plus handwriting conversion to text is very good.

Unless you make periods at the end of a sentence kind of larger than jot a quick "dot", then it may miss that ... and run two sentences together. It's not Perfect when I'm in a hurry, but it's very good.

I've noticed that as well. It's miles ahead of Write Pad for iPad in handwriting recognition. The devs should change the name of it in Notes Plus to "chicken scratch recognition" because it's that good.
 
I've mostly been using Remarks for the past few months. Not because its the most feature rich per se, but because I think the design is nice and it has pretty much of the features I've needed. Also, I have a few other apps by Readdle (its makers) and those have been good to me. Lately, however, it has become incredibly slow for me when writing in zoomed in mode. Up to the point that its really unusable. I am using an iPad 3/ a new iPad so that can't really be the problem. Nothing seems to help, I've even rebooted my iPad a couple of times which I usually never do.

Then I noticed yesterday that Noteshelf was discounted to $.99/€.79 and decided to try it out. I'm very happy I did, because so far it has been great. It is a beautifully designed app that has a bunch more features than Remarks, which I haven't yet used very much but seem to be nice extras. Furthermore, on my iPad it just seems to work much more smoothly and it's so much less frustrating because of that.

I have also tried a bunch of other note taking apps; Note Taker HD, Notes Plus, uPad, Notability are the ones that come to mind. Out of thee I think Notes Plus and Notabilty are definitely best. The reason I don't use either of them as my main note taking app is that I just hate the way they look. Their UIs are intuitive but I think both apps simply look ugly. I may be nitpicking here but design is just something that is very important to make me feel comfortable using the app long term.

All in all, if Remarks would get an update to be a little less slow for me, I would maybe start using that again. As it is, however, Noteshelf offers a beautiful UI, smooth performance and all the features I need and I'm very happy with the purchase that I've made yesterday. Don't know if the sale is still going on but I highly recommend it.

Edit: checked and Noteshelf's sale is still going on right now.
 
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The new iPad is my first so I'm just learning to use it. I have purchased and tried several note apps and am very disappointed with every palm-rest feature I have tried. Perhaps I am just heavy-handed. But resting my palm causes all kinds of disruptions - from moving the page, to erasing what I write, to disabling writing all together (until I remove my hand from the palm-rest area). Am I wrong in expecting that I can actually rest my palm on the "palm-rest" area or is this a misnomer and you must actually refrain from any serious contact with it?

Update: Just realized that turning off multitasking gestures in Settings seems to solve my problems.
 
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... <snip> .... Lately, however, it has become incredibly slow for me when writing in zoomed in mode. Up to the point that its really unusable. ... <snip> ....

Okay, please forgive me if I'm saying something that you already know ...
But, did you close down apps that have a saved state in the background? This is more than just minimizing an app ... I mean closing down all the other apps. I.e. double push the home button, hold down on the apps in the lower row until they jiggle, and then tap the (x) to close them down.

This can go a long way towards memory intensive apps running more smoothly. Again, you may have done this ... and I may be saying something you already know .... but I guess some people may not know how to close down apps to keep them from running in the background.

Let us know ...
 
I think I have tried that before, but it was of no use. However, with this new update my problems seem to be solved.

Have grown quite fond of Noteshelf over the past 2 days though, so don't know yet what will be my go-to app from now on.

Edit: I just noticed there are two threads on note taking apps going on at the same time in this forum. In the other thread I just posted about a just released update for Remarks that offers some performance enhancements and audio notes.
 
Remarks just got updated.

I just attended a meeting and used Remarks all evening.
After downloading the update, my first impressions are good - definitely improved on speed (experienced important lagging with the eraser, not any more in v 1.4)
 
Yeah, that was a wasted 10 spot. But I can safely recommend NotesPlus, and Remarks is a very very close second, but NotesPlus has so many awesome features.

Geez, I should have saw that and stopped you mate, notesplus and writepad buy and use the same HWR(Handwriting Recognition) SDK (from MyScript Memo). There's definitely no reason to waste 10 bucks just to try out the HWR...BTW, I remember it was on sale for 0.99 just a few days ago, I thought it was still too expensive (for what it is) and skipped it.:D

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Also, I'd only recommend notability for now, notesplus has too many bugs, remarks still lack features, notability has the best balance at the moment.

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The new iPad is my first so I'm just learning to use it. I have purchased and tried several note apps and am very disappointed with every palm-rest feature I have tried. Perhaps I am just heavy-handed. But resting my palm causes all kinds of disruptions - from moving the page, to erasing what I write, to disabling writing all together (until I remove my hand from the palm-rest area). Am I wrong in expecting that I can actually rest my palm on the "palm-rest" area or is this a misnomer and you must actually refrain from any serious contact with it?

Update: Just realized that turning off multitasking gestures in Settings seems to solve my problems.

Switch-off,mulit-touch gesture in settings, there is no way to keep both at the moment. System can't tell it's a whole palm or just five tiny fingers, they're treated as the same.

This can be a pain cuz those two gestures are extremely useful, I only close it when I know I need to write down a lot of stuff, otherwise I'd rather keep my palm in the air. If you jailbreak it can be switched by a sbsettings toggle, but still, we'd rather use them together, hope Apple gets it done soon.
 
I've mostly been using Remarks for the past few months. Not because its the most feature rich per se, but because I think the design is nice and it has pretty much of the features I've needed. Also, I have a few other apps by Readdle (its makers) and those have been good to me. Lately, however, it has become incredibly slow for me when writing in zoomed in mode. Up to the point that its really unusable. I am using an iPad 3/ a new iPad so that can't really be the problem. Nothing seems to help, I've even rebooted my iPad a couple of times which I usually never do.

Then I noticed yesterday that Noteshelf was discounted to $.99/€.79 and decided to try it out. I'm very happy I did, because so far it has been great. It is a beautifully designed app that has a bunch more features than Remarks, which I haven't yet used very much but seem to be nice extras. Furthermore, on my iPad it just seems to work much more smoothly and it's so much less frustrating because of that.

I have also tried a bunch of other note taking apps; Note Taker HD, Notes Plus, uPad, Notability are the ones that come to mind. Out of thee I think Notes Plus and Notabilty are definitely best. The reason I don't use either of them as my main note taking app is that I just hate the way they look. Their UIs are intuitive but I think both apps simply look ugly. I may be nitpicking here but design is just something that is very important to make me feel comfortable using the app long term.

All in all, if Remarks would get an update to be a little less slow for me, I would maybe start using that again. As it is, however, Noteshelf offers a beautiful UI, smooth performance and all the features I need and I'm very happy with the purchase that I've made yesterday. Don't know if the sale is still going on but I highly recommend it.

Edit: checked and Noteshelf's sale is still going on right now.

Noteshelf is great for sketching and short note taking, I love the UI and templates as well but the fact that it can't pinch to zoom nor zoom deep enough in zoom writing box makes it not suitable for complex note taking.

However one can use several apps together, I use penultimate for quick sketching cuz it let you start writing withn 1 or 2 seconds (depending on whether it's totally closed), noteshelf for diary and short note taking (Nobody wants to write diary without a password lock and noteshelf provides that), notability for university lecture note-taking.

If someday notesplus axes all the major bugs and add auto-export at least (which is what notability does now), I'd definitely replace notability with it, drawing gesture is way more convenient comparing to repeated change-tool-and-change-back process.
 
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