I am always in awe of is the number of different platforms that Evernote supports. Having worked in software in the past, I can only imagine the product management headache that must cause.
Because of all their platforms, sometimes different versions start getting a bit long in the tooth and that was definitely the case for Evernote’s Windows client. Version 3.5 was good, but it definitely had some catching up to do.
Thankfully, last week the company dropped a big shiny new Windows update: Version 4.0.
The first benefit that 4.0 brings is speed. According to the company, the new version is a complete rewrite from the ground up. They say it starts five times faster and uses half the memory. I am not going to sit here with a stopwatch to test that claim, but it definitely feels much snappier to me.
UI Changes
While they were rewriting things anyways, they took the opportunity to clean up the UI.
They made things prettier and (in my opinion anyways) more functional. For example, they made it so that you can choose which type of note that you want to create right off the bat.
They also have made things cleaner by hiding the functons that you don’t need to see until you actually need to use them. For example, the search description is hidden until you click on it.
Also they cleverly hid the thumbnail size slider. It is invisible until you move your mouse down to the bottom of the thumbnail section.
Windows 7 Jump Street
If you’re on Windows 7 (which I finally am), you can use some of the new features such as geolocation and you can use Windows 7’s Jump Lists.
What is a Jump List? Yeah, I didn’t know either (what can I say, I’m usually a Mac guy).
When you click on the Evernote icon down in the task list, you can now do a bunch of Evernote functions right from there. Pretty cool.
Where’s The Search?
One thing that I find a bit weird is that you can’t search inside a note when you are viewing a note. Obviously when you do a general Evernote search, it will find and highlight the words. However, if you have a note open I can’t see a way to then search inside it. Hopefully they will add that soon.
There are a bunch of other improvements that you can read about in their blog post like improved clipping and editing.
If you’re a Windows Evernote user and are not sure whether to upgrade or not, I say go for it. If you tried Evernote in the past and didn’t like the UI or found it slow, it might be worth checking out again.
Have you tried 4.0 yet? How do you like it?
