Sticky note and to-do apps are prominent across all platforms, including PCs, mobile devices and more. There’s good reason for it too, since it’s one of the most convenient ways to jot down reminders, shopping lists, and more. Apps like Evernote add cross-platform support allowing you to take your notes with you on-the-go, and access them at home on your PC. Such apps are great for simple tasks and reminders, but what if you want a little more out of your notation tool? iQ Notes for Windows is a sticky notes style app which includes some additional features like expense and time tracking built-in.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

iQ Notes for Windows isn’t just a Post-it-Note and sticky note style app. It comes bundled with some additional features like expense and time tracking support, FTP server syncing, alarm and reminder options for specific notes and more. iQ includes support for multiple languages such as English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.

Pros

• Sticky note and reminder tool, with support for an unlimited number of notes
• Notes can have up to 12 tabs each, allowing better organization
• iQ Notes is truly a comprehensive and robust notation tool, there are so many features that it would take me a while to list them all, I strongly recommend you read the review and visit the official site (link included below)
  • Notes can be archived, printed, saved and even exported as text files
  • Notes can be encrypted or password protected
  • Notes can be transferred to (synced with) other computers via FTP server, local network or internet connection
  • You can assign alarms to notes, which helps create pertinent reminders that appear when necessary
  • You can add expense or time tracking support to any note
• Has a built-in clipboard manager
• iQ Notes is a lightweight application, since it uses less than 4MB of RAM while running

Cons

• Final update was made in April, 2013 whereupon it was declared that it has reached end-of-life. This means no future updates, revisions or bug fixes will be released.
• Doesn’t support richtext, meaning notes can only consist of text — no images, tables, etc. You can, however, have lists and change the color of text.

Discussion

The biggest drawback for iQ Notes is that it has reached a point which the developers calls “end-of-life”. That means it is totally free, however there will no longer be any updates or version changes. In addition, any bugs or issues left remaining will not be fixed. Some folks will be okay with that, while others will not, so that is why I’m mentioning that up front.

Unfortunately, it does not come in a portable package, at least not from the official developer. That means you need to install the application in order to use it. I did not encounter any bloatware or hidden packages during the install process. However, you will need to select the primary language package during install.

Once installed, iQ Notes is pretty easy to use. An icon in the form of a sticky note will appear in the system notification tray. It essentially serves as a central hub for all of apps main tasks. Of course, the first time you open the app you will be presented with the settings menu, which is quite comprehensive. In fact, there’s so much to configure with this app that the settings menu can be a bit overwhelming the first time you see it.

Really, all you need to enter the first time around are your initials and full name. Unless you change the default settings you can start a new note at any time by double clicking on the system tray icon. You can have an unlimited number of notes open, and you can have up to 12 different tabs for a single note. This allows you to not only organize your work or notes, but compartmentalize them too.

With a new note you can do quite a bit of the standard stuff, like cut and paste, enter bulleted lists, print the content, change tiles, and more. What’s really interesting though is that you can also do things like the following through an advanced menu:

• Archive or delete the note
• Save the note to a text file
• Add tab
• View the note properties- this is pretty involved
• Manage expense tracking

Of course, there are plenty of other tasks, but again they’re quite common in notation tools. You can check out the screenshot to see the complete list.

The note properties window is particularly interesting, as it’s divided into four tabs itself: general, address, protection, and tabs. The general tab allows you to specify the subject, title, set open status (auto open or not), background color, and associated alarms. Obviously, if you set an alarm in the properties window the related note will show up at the user specified date and time. The address tab allows you to enter personal information like name, address, and contact data. The protection tab allows you to set a password lock on the related content, while the tabs button allows you to manage existing tabs.

As you can already tell, iQ Notes is quite comprehensive and involved, meaning there’s a lot to do. You can also right click on the system tray icon to access more options which allow you to do things like tile all notes, hide all notes, manage notes, choose the default font and more.

There’s enough to do that it would be hard for me to touch on everything in this review, otherwise it would turn into a book. It functions very well and the added features are enough to rival even the best notation tools out there like Evernote. Admittedly, the UI isn’t the most appealing you’ll find out of similar apps, but that’s okay since function is always more important. The expense and time tracking tools really are a godsend, especially for a sticky note app like this. That goes hand-in-hand with the alarm feature, which allows you to assign alarms to specific notes. They appear exactly when you need them to, which can be extremely important at times.

For reference, iQ Notes is fairly light on system resources since it uses less than 4MB of RAM while running. That’s pretty awesome to find out, especially considering it’s an app that’s meant to remain running silently in the background.

Conclusion and download link

iQ Notes is a convenient and useful notation tool for Windows. While it doesn’t have the most appealing UI on the market, it certainly does offer robust functionality. You can open a new note at any time by double clicking on the system tray icon or using hotkeys –which can be customized by the way. In addition, you can have an unlimited number of notes open at a time, and up to 12 inline tabs per note. This allows you to organize your work quite well. You can also take advantage of a time and expense tracking feature, which can be implemented for any note. Notes can be password protected, backed up to text files, attached to spreadsheets or applications and more. Better yet, you can also encrypt, print and sort them, which becomes almost necessary once you have a huge buildup of them. There are a lot of other features too like FTP server support which allows you to sync notes across multiple computers, a clipboard manager for copied text content, and a network send option that will allow you to send note content via the local network or internet. The ultimate point is that there’s a lot here with the only major downside being that notes don’t support richtext.

Overall, iQ Notes really is a comprehensive notation tool, and it only uses about 4MB of RAM while running. I definitely recommend this one, especially if you want to stay away from apps like Evernote, which use more of an online presence.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 6.00

Supported OS: Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8

Download size: 3.12MB

VirusTotal malware scan results: 0/46

Is it portable? No

iQ Notes homepage