Outboard brain, analog or digital?
A year after getting my first Moleskine notebook I've filled it up and had to decide again whether to use a paper notebook or a Palm.
I love a beautiful Moleskine with its nice paper, leather(ette?) binding, and illustrious (if perhaps exaggerated) history. And as I've remarked elsewhere, they don't make a Palm shaped like my butt. But you can't do a keyword search in a Moleskine and you can't sync it to your desktop. If it's lost it's lost.
The Palm has certainly improved since the ancient model clone sitting unused in its cradle by my Mac. I think it's the second one I've bought with the best of intentions but decided it was too much hassle to carry it around or to squeeze my life into its teeny user interface. Meanwhile my use of the Moleskine is improving, too: this time I started out color-coding about half of the notebook with sections structured according to how my brain works (addresses, books, gifts, music, videos, etc.) The rest is for chronological use. That should save me having to do a linear search on the whole damn book the next time I'm trying to find that Spanish thriller I read about, the number of the plumber somebody recommended, or my daughter's shoe size.
There's one thing which still might win me over to the Palm, though: if my employers will share the cost of buying one that's integrated into a phone. Anything to avoid adding one more item to the pieces of hardware I have to strap on every time I go out the door -- at least until we all start wearing utility belts.
