Over on the Future Shop blog, Krypto has given you her tips for getting a great laptop—Student Laptop Buying Tips – From a Perpetual Student’s Perspective—well here are some more tips from someone who spent a good amount of time in class, and in front of it. Okay, truth be told, these aren’t all my tips but a list of great sites I found on App Storm—20 Back to School Apps and Tools for Students—and they are a good selection of things to help you out. To make this a little more than a link list, I’m going to chime in on a subtle problem with all these resources—too many great choices that you spin your wheels.
Let’s take note taking apps for a moment. There is no doubt that Evernote is an awesome app. Almost any OS, platform, or device, they’ve got you covered. I’d be hard pressed to give you any significant downsides (personally I don’t like the UI or how it’s “Notebook” based…those are small details really) to using Evernote to take class notes to research notes, but…
You could use Yojimbo if you’re on a Mac. Or there is Simplenote on iOS devices which then syncs into a myriad of apps on your desktop as well as the web. Or like me, use Scrivener for all your writing which also has a great way to gather notes and research.
Yeah, I’m even looking at these choices and thinking … hey, why do I gather notes in Yojimbo instead of Scrivener when I’m working on a project… And this is my real back to school tip:
Find a good app, learn it, use it, and stick with it.
Oh sure if someone says a particular app is really, really awesome take a gander at it, but unless the new app solves a problem you’re having, just file it for checking out later. I didn’t switch to Pages and iWork until Word corrupted a critical file for the third time. No, iWork isn’t perfect, but it’s been doing a better job for me than Word did. I didn’t start using Scrivener until I was struggling with keeping my first book organized (moving around sections and such) and tried Ulysses (after reading about Ulysses on TUAW and then Scrivener later).
So, to offer a good set of tools for a student (sorry this is a rather Mac centric list, but I’ll note Windows options I know about) that are simple and straight foward and work:
- Dropbox. Use it for backup or sharing or access to files out and about. It’s great and if you have a little extra cash, go for the upgrade. If not, get a group of friends to all refer together and get referral credit)
- Evernote. Yeah I like Yojimbo more, but it’s also commercial, and this is also about doing stuff on a budget.
- Simplenote (combo with Notational Velocity or other desktop app). Catherine Winters keeps things organized as well as jot notes on the go with this awesome tool. At the moment, you can’t download the app from the App Store, but they promise a new version soon.
- Office suite: Yep Open Office is free and getting better all the time. Yep Google Docs is fantastic—Catherine and I are collaborating on a project using it—and has nearly every tool you’d need. Apples’ iWork suite certainly is visually appealing and mostly compatible with MS Office, but … We all know MS Office rules the roost. It’s almost a requirement to get through life if not school. My advice: see if you can live without it, but don’t weep crocodile tears if you can’t.
- Scrivener: Yeah I’m biased. I’ve written two entire books in it, plus almost all the posts I’ve written for Future Shop, plus a number of other longer articles and documents, so yeah I’m cool with the bias. Yes, it’s Mac only. Yes, the current version seems a tad out of date (it’s not, I use it everyday), but my inside sources say that the beta program is going very well and the long-awaited version 2 is due out this fall. And to show you how cool the folks behind Scrivener are, they have a list of not only Windows versions you might like, but links to their competitors too. Yeah, damn straight.
Contest:
Now, for a contest. You know I don’t do them very often, but I think students need to have great tools to use. The folks at Literature and Latte have given me two codes for Scrivener…which of course are for the current version but … they will be honored for a free upgrade to version 2.0 (it’s going to be a pay update)! So … the contest (Yep you have to work for this one).
Leave a comment, or link to a post, of at least 250 words why you need Scrivener to write better papers (instead of Word or Pages). If you’re not sure why, download the demo version first! Yes, this is aimed at students. I’ll keep this contest open for a week (until August 28th). Who will pick? Well, I’ll let you in on that later.
Good luck and pass it along!
In case you don’t win: Buy Scrivener (Regular Licence) or Buy Scrivener (Education Licence)
