CintaNotes

CintaNotes helps you keep track of ideas and snippets of text that you want to save and refer back to later -- all through a streamlined interface. With just a few hot key strokes, you can paste a selection into the app and keep right on going with your reading or research.

Pros

Hot keys: Hot key activation of different note-taking features is a great option in this program. To add a new original note, all you have to do is hit the Insert (Ins) key, and a new dialog box will open, so you can type in whatever you'd like. Or if you'd like to copy and paste an item from a Web page or other document that you're reading, just highlight the desired entry and then hit CTRL+F12 to have your selection automatically added to the CintaNotes main database.

Organizational tools: This program also makes it very convenient to go back and find specific notes when you need to. You can add Tags to each note to help categorize them and make them easier to search for later. And even if you didn't tag a particular note, you can still search for any keywords you choose, no matter where they show up in the note. You can also view notes by Time Created, Time Modified, Title, Link, or Size, and you can switch to Reverse Order as well for any of these categories.

Cons

No images: CintaNotes does not support saving images in your notes. Depending on how you take notes and what you're using them for, this may or may not present a problem. But copying and pasting images is a feature that a lot of similar programs do offer.

Bottom Line

CintaNotes offers a nice set of tools to facilitate your note-taking, while at the same time not overloading you with options or a complicated interface. As long as the lack of image saving isn't an issue for you, this is a great program to try out. You can use it for free for 10 days to get a sense of how it works; and if you'd like to purchase it after that, it costs $25.

Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of CintaNotes 2.5.2.