Post-it Notes, those little yellow pads of sticky-backed paper, changed the world, or at least the way people who live in it leave reminders to themselves and others. When the layers of notes (now multicolor) start to resemble cedar shingles, it's time to clean your computer monitor. That brings up an important point: as big an improvement as sticky notes have been over the old paper napkin method, software versions like Sticky Notes may be better still. For one thing, Sticky Notes lets you organize, search, store, and back up your notes; set reminders, priorities, and alarms; and customize its look and behavior. Plus it'll never get lost in your desk drawer or behind your coffee mug. Sticky Notes is free to try, with a few features disabled, but at $4.99 the full version easily passes the Lunch Test, costing about what you'd pay for a sandwich and drink from the local carry-out.
Sticky Notes resides in the system tray; right-clicking its icon opens the program's main menu, where users create and manage Notes and the program's settings. However, you can also configure hot keys to make Sticky Notes even faster and easier to use by clicking Program Settings and selecting the Hotkeys tab (you can also set General Settings, configure Notes, and more). We clicked Create a New Note, and a new note popped up with the cursor ready. You don't have to click Save or do anything to slow you down; a few quick keystrokes and then click the red Exit button, and Sticky Notes automatically saves your note. When we'd saved a few Notes, we clicked the menu to view Recent Notes, Arrange Notes (cascade or tile) and Search them. Need help? Click Help: Help appears.
There's always room for improvement: for instance, automatic or scheduled backups would be nice to have, though we appreciate the simple but effective Backup and Restore feature that's already a part of Sticky Notes. And you'll still need paper sticky notes when you need to mark your lunch or leave a note on a colleague's door. Pretty much everything else? Sticky Notes has got that covered.
Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Sticky Notes 2.3.
