The largest number of hits on this site has come from those three words “Evernote Vs Dropbox”.
I was reading up on ‘Evernote Essentials’ author Brett Kelly’s blog, and that brought me to an interesting topic. Should I even use Dropbox? One thing I learned during Arthur Andersen days was the importance of categorizing data/information into a knowledgebase, the time and effort spent on categorizing definitely helps in the future. Otherwise, you would just collect information, without using it. It would not have value, unless you had meta data.
So here I am thinking about whether I can use Evernote as the permanent storage area in the cloud. This will force me to organize the files, include meta data, through tags and notebooks but also make it searchable, which is most important. The main ‘data’ consumption for me is from photos and music. The way I look at is music can be replaced, it was a creation by someone else, and usually commercial. And with music subscription services, you can stream any music you like. The problem with that is that if there’s no internet connection, there’s no music. So local copy is always important until the time when broadband becomes ubiquitous. Whereas photos are memories and you wont be able to recreate them.
The other thing I like about Evernote is the ability to scan images for search words. That you cannot do in Dropbox. Another thing which I find interesting is the ability to secure text within Evernote. I can select some text, and encrypt it. When it comes to note taking, the ability to record a conversation and have it uploaded for future reference is a major plus. With Dropbox you need another app, and that too its live upload (Evernote did this feature well, by giving you the option to have uploads take place when you’re connected to wifi)
Things I don’t like about Evernote is the inability to lock Evernote on iOS. Just to stop prying eyes, when you share your device with someone.
Well, I’m going to be experimenting over the next couple of months. Meanwhile, I have to find option for uploading my photos as a back up? Picasa? Flickr (no way!) What about music… well, let’s just wait for iCloud to roll out!