Penultimate

Penultimate

By Evernote

Free

Available for iPad

I purchased this app two years ago when I received my first iPad, it is the app I still use most regularly.   Since I purchased the app it dropped in price to be now free.   Personally I don’t begrudging paying for the app, as it is really the best of all the hand writing notebook apps.   The handwriting is accurate and responsive.  The wrist protector technology is very accurate.  You can write with your finger or a stylus.  However I would recommend a fine tip stylus.   

The app enables you to digitalise note-taking in notebooks with the added bonus you can embed photos from iPad camera or photos, and you have the choice of free paper background from graph to line paper, to paid backgrounds from sheet music to to do lists.   The note books can be synchronized to Evernote, emailed, printed, sent to iTunes and even opened and read in other apps tools that have the facility to open PDF documents.   The real bonus though is the Evernote functionality to recognize your handwriting for searching, you can type in keywords and search your own notes for that critical information you noted down months ago.

An app I would recommend for any student or academic who wishes to make lecture, seminar, tutorial, workshop or revision notes.   As an engineer it has enabled me to replace my paper based log book and organise my notes more effectively, i.e. different note book for different activities oppose to being noted linearly in one notebook.   One app I would be quite lost without! 

The only niggle is that I use the app so much and produce large volumes of written matieral I am running out memory space on my iPad.   Android community is very keen to see this app in the google market place!