For years I have been wanting to use a computer in class to take notes, but every application I use ends up becoming too cluttered, or I end up with a giant mess of poorly organized text files. Every Mac user has his/her own note-taking app of choice. Some love xPad, others love Scrivener, and even more just stick to the tried and tested Microsoft Office for this task. While I have tested each of these, I was really getting frustrated with the lack of a decent note-taking app in OS X.

I have used Notebook since the day I bought it. From the moment I first opened it, I have been kicking myself for not finding this tool earlier. It really is a student’s best friend. At its base Notebook is a full-featured text editor with support for multiple fonts, Unicode, attachments and ruler settings.

CPN is very versatile – it can be used as a note-taking app, to-do list, or a simple organizer. Many users will love the sheer simplicity, but underneath there is a lot of features that make this app really quite powerful. On the surface the GUI looks just like a notebook, that takes notes with pages and tabs, but take a look inside the preferences and you will see the amount of customizing and formating you can actually do with this app.

In my opinion, the best features of Notebook are the collapsible notes and bullet points, but one of the things that really makes this tool out-shine the competitors is its ability to pair your notes with their context: Responding to a professors email can be linked to the original email, or picking up your sister from a recital can be linked to an address book entry etc. Also a built-in spell checker and word completion tool makes your notes come out right the first time, error free.

You can try Notebook 2.1 free for 30 days and then get a full license for $49.95, a student license for $29.95 or a Family Pack for $99.95.