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Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

jasonkincaid.net

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Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#101

Post by jimwalsh »

bdwalter wrote: post #84

I have been a loyal Evernote premium payer since 2009, and using it even longer. For a long time I recommended it to friends but since have stopped. I have developed some concerns with it over the years. 1. Fear of data loss... it's probably the largest part of my mistrust of all these dang cloud services that want to control/own me or otherwise lock me into their service. I run a 99.999% uptime, extreme scale, SaaS…

I agree with all your points. It's why I've used Evernote less and less over time. As for point 6, if you are on Mac/iOS, Clear App is a great way to handle the list issue when you are actually in the store.

http://realmacsoftware.com/clear

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#102

Post by amatix »

AdrianRossouw wrote: post #24

skitch used to be such a wonderful little application, but I refuse to pay for it since evernote bought it and crapped all over it. is there a good alternative to skitch yet?

http://glui.me/ has been good for me - I use it to save/share via Dropbox, but it supports a bunch of services. Does one thing well and gets out of the way :)

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#103

Post by ishansharma »

GraffitiTim wrote: post #55

I've been an avid Evernote user since the beginning (one of the first few thousand users). I use it to record all sorts of ideas, thoughts, notes, reminders, research, and references. One year ago, my girlfriend was using Evernote (on my suggestion) to write her travel journal on our trip to Southeast Asia. I saw her note sync a bunch of times (the iOS app shows a little blue arrow when it's uploading). But one day s…

Their iOS app has always been this slow. However, sync across platforms is quite important to me. So, I have set up Drafts for fast note taking and shortcuts to send notes to relevant notebook.

Since notes are saved in Drafts as well, there is very low chance of losing them. Plus, Drafts has markdown support!

I am sure you'll find this setup better for notes!

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#104

Post by tempestn »

madisonmay wrote: post #76
GraffitiTim wrote: post #55

I've been an avid Evernote user since the beginning (one of the first few thousand users). I use it to record all sorts of ideas, thoughts, notes, reminders, research, and references. One year ago, my girlfriend was using Evernote (on my suggestion) to write her travel journal on our trip to Southeast Asia. I saw her note sync a bunch of times (the iOS app shows a little blue arrow when it's uploading). But one day s…

I tried Evernote as well, and it always felt bulky. I've since migrated to Fetchnotes ( http://www.fetchnotes.com )

I dislike hearing software described using broad adjectives like "bulky" without supporting analysis. Does this mean it contains features you find useless? (Which ones?) Do you find the interface unintuitive? Or does it run too slowly? One person's "bulk" or "bloat" or "cruft" is another person's key feature, so it seems to me it is important to specify what exactly the bulk consists of. Without more detail, it's akin to an ad hominem.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#106

Post by jbrooksuk »

jimwalsh wrote: post #101
bdwalter wrote: post #84

I have been a loyal Evernote premium payer since 2009, and using it even longer. For a long time I recommended it to friends but since have stopped. I have developed some concerns with it over the years. 1. Fear of data loss... it's probably the largest part of my mistrust of all these dang cloud services that want to control/own me or otherwise lock me into their service. I run a 99.999% uptime, extreme scale, SaaS…

I agree with all your points. It's why I've used Evernote less and less over time. As for point 6, if you are on Mac/iOS, Clear App is a great way to handle the list issue when you are actually in the store. http://realmacsoftware.com/clear

I use Clear for my shopping all of the time. Since they've allowed us to use more characters I've even started noting the aisle numbers so I can look them up without trying to peer over everyone and walking up and down for ages.

I hate shopping, but this has certainly relieved some of the pain for me.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#107

Post by belluchan »

veidr wrote: post #100

As a paying user for years, I've had Evernote lose data many times -- sometimes important, irreplaceable data that I hadn't yet had time to back up elsewhere. Evernote is some of the very worst software that has ever survived more than a few months on my computer without being deleted. Horrible show-stopping crash/data loss bugs are the norm, and have been increasing steadily as they add feature after feature with ap…

Use time machine or something like time machine to back up your data. Then you can recover it when Evernote craps up later.

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#108

Post by ishansharma »

tempestn wrote: post #67

I really hope Evernote's take-away from this is that they need to scale back development on all their auxiliary stuff - hello, food, whatever, as well as all but the most critical feature requests, and focus as much as possible on making the core experience bulletproof. I would _hate_ to have to give up Evernote, but like others here, am extremely apprehensive about the possibility of losing data. One stop-gap they m…

This exactly! Right now, I am a premium user as well but their iOS apps are way slow. I remember that there was a time when their iOS app used to stutter during rotating animation on iPad 4th Gen (most powerful iOS device a year back!).

The other thing is that there is no true Evernote alternative. I have iOS and Windows devices but I travel and internet is flaky sometimes. There's nothing that will store all my images, screenshots(Skitch), handwritten notes (with OCR!) and use it natively across platforms!

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#109

Post by atmosx »

bdwalter wrote: post #84

I have been a loyal Evernote premium payer since 2009, and using it even longer. For a long time I recommended it to friends but since have stopped. I have developed some concerns with it over the years. 1. Fear of data loss... it's probably the largest part of my mistrust of all these dang cloud services that want to control/own me or otherwise lock me into their service. I run a 99.999% uptime, extreme scale, SaaS…

I'm an evernote user too. I use it's very basic free account and I never had any problem. But I to edit notes rarely and don't depend on it.

However, given your level of expertise not finding a note-taking solution, seems ridiculous. Doesn't feel like a real problem. I never understood how a note-keeping application can attract that kind of money Evernote does, but then again there are many things I don't understand.

However, given today's tools, taking notes can be done using any level of encryption, privacy you need. Seriously, that's not a big problem for a tech savvy user.

ps. Caring about privacy (at that level) and using cloud services, other than Owncloud hosted in a server you alone have physical access is silly :-)

Re: Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

#110

Post by ishansharma »

tempestn wrote: post #104
madisonmay wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried Evernote as well, and it always felt bulky. I've since migrated to Fetchnotes ( http://www.fetchnotes.com )

I dislike hearing software described using broad adjectives like "bulky" without supporting analysis. Does this mean it contains features you find useless? (Which ones?) Do you find the interface unintuitive? Or does it run too slowly? One person's "bulk" or "bloat" or "cruft" is another person's key feature, so it seems to me it is important to specify what exactly the bulk consists of. Without more detail, it's aki…

Ah. Let me explain the "bulk" of Evernote.

1. iOS: App has always been slow! Syncing takes time(should be seamless), animations hang up in between and there is sometimes seconds of gap between a tap and result. When you search, it takes lot of time (I have iPhone 4S and iPad 4th gen, same on both, so not a device issue!) A handy feature is document mode for taking pics but it chokes on multiple images. Many times, it crops images randomly and throws them out of order.

2. Windows: Features and apps are not well thought out. They have Skitch for screnshots but it sends screenshots ONLY to default notebook. I want to keep them in a different notebook but it won't let me customize. The editing is very hard and you can't paste HTML text reliably. Windows client has many good shortcuts for sure, but it also has unusual behaviour like tab not taking you to next relevant field (enter a note title, hit tab, suddenly you have selected the notebook!)

3. Web: Web clipper has improved in latest version but still has lot of issues like not syncing PDFs and images(happened twice to me, had to manually copy image). Going to PDF (Chrome) and then Saving it will not work. It will sync indefinitely. But right click the link and boom, it syncs!

While I appreciate the features, they are bulky in the sense that sometimes, they get in the way and don't let me take notes quickly. In fact, I have setup a different app(Drafts) on both iPad and iPhone to take notes in Markdown and then save to Evernote, saves me from lot of headache and data is never lost as it is at different places.

Edit: Formatting.

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