If what you want to use Evernote for can be done in Notepad, then you might not be the right audience. Or you might not be thinking big enough. I've been usin

If what you want to use Evernote for can be done in Notepad, then you might not be the right audience. Or you might not be thinking big enough. I've been using Evernote since very early, and it took me awhile to get it, too. I have a few differet use cases: 1. Keeping a copy of almost everything I read online. The search feature makes it easy to find stuff, and having a screenshot-like copy means I can tell when people try to disappear stuff. In my opinion, 95% of people using Pinboard and Delicious are doing it wrong; if you want to record where to find (highly dynamic) information then those are the right tools, but if it's information itself you want, why not just have a copy? 2. More general recordkeeping. The automated OCR means I can take a picture of a receipt and both (a) have it and (b) find it later when I need to be reimbursed. My family also moves far and frequently for work, and Evernote provides an extra place to store the kids' shot records, tax returns, etc. (You can make encrypted notes, or upload pre-encrypted files.) And despite the fact that everything is in the cloud, a backup copy of your account is kept on your computer, so even if Evernote goes bust or loses your stuff, you've got a backup copy. They also have great customer service. When my credit card number changed and my premium membership didn't get renewed, they just ave me a couple of months free while I got it sorted out. And it's $50/year ($4/mo) for a premium account! It's worth $4/mo just to be able to scan my records and then throw away te paper copies.