7 Sticky Notes

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on November 09, 2011

There is no imminent shortage of sticky notes apps for Windows. They come as desktop apps, gadgets, and add-ons. Most are free; some are portable. Some merely provide a quick-and-easy way to pin reminders to the desktop. Others try to replicate the look of paper sticky notes but with enhanced features. That describes 7 Sticky Notes, a free sticky notes program that uses shading and highlighting to give its notes a realistic 3D look.

The program gave us two installation options, Normal or Portable. We chose the standard installation, but Sticky Notes would make a great portable tool, combining versatility with a small footprint. Sticky Notes opened with two associated windows: the note field, which displayed an intro message, and the Note Configuration Window, a compact dialog with tabs for quickly configuring Fonts, Style, and Alarms, the latter with a Sleep Setup option. We typed a note using the default font, Segoe Print, which resembles handwriting, only legible. Clicking the green check mark saved our changes, closed the Configuration Window, and rolled up our note to a minimized size displaying the date and time it was created and the first line of our message. Right-clicking the note let us edit, resize, copy, or delete it, among other choices. The program's system tray icon serves as central command. Clicking the icon changed color and displayed or hid the notes on the desktop. We could also open the Notes Manager, a tree view-based tool, and the General Settings, a much more detailed and extensive properties sheet that let us configure not only how our notes looked and behaved but also set up synching and other options. Clicking the Help button opened a Web-based help site, including screenshots. The keyboard shortcuts proved the fastest way to do things, once we'd learned them.

Some sticky notes apps stand apart from the crowd. That's the case with 7 Sticky Notes, which has plenty of options but is extremely easy to use. We especially like the ability to show and hide our notes with a click, which let us use all the notes we needed without totally obscuring our desktop.