Are you one of those people who feels that there ought to be more than 8 working hours in a day? One of those people who has the habit of forgetting the things to do and meetings to attend on any given day? Is your PC monitor or the walls of your cubicle always decorated with those little “Post-it notes”? Yes??? Good for you! Here’s a tiny piece of software that will make your work life infinitely more peaceful from now.
Presenting Turbonote+, A convenient way to keep track of schedules!
TurboNote+ (Plus) is a small application that allows you to post handy notes on your Windows desktop. These “virtual notes” are just like the physical ones made by 3M Company (Birla 3M Ltd. in India) and used by us in real life. The only difference is that it has all the advantages of the physical note and much more! TurboNote uses small colored notes for reminders, messages, phone numbers, to-do lists, and more.
Installation and Features
As MS would say, the installation is a breeze! Just go to https://turbonote.com, click on the required link and follow the instructions for download. The setup file is just around 800kb. The download therefore doesn’t take more than a minute at the most. Once the download is through, simply click on the setup file and the self-installer does the needful. On running the program for the first time, 2 yellow coloured notes appear on the desktop which give tips for using Turbonote. Once you read these and get the basic idea, start using it right away! To create a new note, left click on the program icon in the system tray and select “New Note”. Once you type in whatever you want to, save it by right clicking and selecting the “Save Note” option.
My needs are many!
Apart from the default yellow colour, you can choose from Green, Blue and Orange. There is also an option to include a window border that displays a date stamp and a custom message. The notes can be made to appear on top of all open applications but I personally feel this to be very irritating and prefer to keep it in the background on the desktop. In case you’re one of those people obsessed with a clean desktop, the note can also be minimized. There is no limit on the number of notes that can be created at once. For example, I can yellow note for the list of things to do, a green note for important meetings lined up for the week, a blue one for phone calls to be made, etc. A really useful feature is that TurboNote always remembers your open notes, so they re-appear on the desktop each time the system is restarted.
Can I use it in the office?
In case you have made a note with all your important meetings mentioned in it, there’s an “Alarm” feature that automatically reminds you of your appointment at a preset time. If I have a meeting at 1:00 PM but get struck in some important work and forget it, I can always set the alarm feature on before hand so that it reminds me on or before the designated time. Perhaps the greatest use of this software is in a typical office environment. You can post live links to web pages, e-mail addresses and even files on the hard drive. What’s more, these notes can also be sent to colleagues or friends over a TCP/IP network. In the “Send To” option, mention the name of your colleagues PC or its IP address if you know it. I find it very convenient to “chat” with some of my colleagues at Delhi and other places across India because we’re all part of the same company network. There is also an option to send files and internet links to colleagues by following the same procedure as above. The program indicates whether or not the note has been sent successfully by displaying a graphic “smiley”. You can also personalize the “alarm” and ’’incoming note’’ sounds, hotkeys and other settings.
What about the security aspect?
A lot of thought has been given while updating it to “Turbonote+” from “Turbonote”. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they even added a “Lock Note” feature in the updated version. By “locking” the note, nothing can be deleted or added to it either by accident or intentionally. However, there’s no password feature, which means that some “peeping tom” can always stroll by my work-station in my absence and alter the contents of the note without breaking sweat. A tiny calculator has been inbuilt in it too. All I need to do is key in the mathematical operation I want it to perform and hit the F2 key and I have the answer in a jiffy. In case you’re through with all the meetings mentioned in a note, the same can be deleted. Whenever a note is saved, a backup is created in a separate folder so that even if you want to go back to a particular day and see what were the things to do on that day, its not a difficult task. A help file caters to any doubts or queries that one may have.
What’s the catch?
There is only one inconvenience that I face with this fella! Turbonote+ is “shareware”, which means that it is programmed to run on a trial basis for 30 days only. After that, an irritating message keeps popping up reminding you to get the software registered. There is one way to circumvent this - uninstall the application and re-install it. The whole process doesn’t take more than 1-2 minutes and you’re free to use it for another 30 hassle-free days. On the flipside, what could have been infinitely worse than this is to have stupid ads appearing out of nowhere. Thankfully, we are spared of that agony!
Thus spake TIC!
I’ve been using this program for more than two years now and am fully satisfied with it. The previous version was quite rudimentary but the upgrade more than makes up for it. It has great features, is small in size, can be highly customized according to one’s needs and is absolutely free of cost! What are you waiting for? Download it now!