Evernote versus Google Drive

For a week or more now, I have been without my personal laptop. My family has a laptop and that is common property and is time shared. However I have a personal iPad and this is version 1  (read no camera) which I purchased when tablets were just being born. I also use an iphone 4 (not 4S) as my humble personal phone.


I had a need to create, modify documents, keep spreadsheets, store some emails, store To-Do notes , store addresses and yes, keep some images. Being a lazy geek, I wanted to have access to the same documents irrespective of which device I have on my hand at that point in time.  I wanted to edit part of the document when I was in my study room (desktop), a part when I was in the garden (iPhone) and a part when I was in the living room (iPad).  
Just a few days of usage compelled me to write this comparison table of joys and sorrows of document-management-by-a-layperson-using-slightly-outdated-devices. 

Summary: Use Evernote if your documents are light-weight and need easy editing (e.g. to-do,images, email copies, HTML text) and G Drive if your documents are to be treated seriously (spreadsheets, projects to be shared with others, PDFs etc) which is not exactly easy editing oriented.

Another summary:  Evernote = For the Young ; 

Google Drive = For the Mature.... LOL  :-D :-D 

Now, this is not a comprehensive comparison of the two documents-on-cloud technologies. However I wanted to share the delights and woes I encountered in this case.

*This table formatting was done by blogger from Evernote. See the effect for yourself.

	iPad v1	iPhone 4	Desktop
ENote	Creating a document : Easy due to form factor	Not easy due to form factor	Easy just like MS Word
	Editing a document: No rich text support. It could be because I have an older version of iOS and hence older version of Evernote. No notifications to guide user.	Forget editing with iPhone.	Easy just like MS Word
	Reading a document: Easy and beautiful	Easy and beautiful	Easy and beautiful
	Type of document: Text , audio clip and image insertion possible; aesthetically very pleasing.	+ image capture + Rich Text	All
	Mailing with Postbox or sharing the doc for multiple users (projects) : Not obvious	Not obvious	Not obvious
	Traditional folder structure : Not obvious (intentionally perhaps)	Not obvious	Not obvious
GDrive	Creating a document : Not easy due to poor UI (the iPad app is yet to come)	Bad	Just like any file on my desktop; Google formats may not always be WYSIWYG
	Editing a document: Use my Safari browser; not pleasing; fat fingers will disrupt	Don't even try	Same as Google Docs - nothing great as user experience but great on performance
	Reading a document: Very Poor; Pagination , magnification etc not up to the mark	Don't try unless it is a simple three liner	Same as desktop
	Type of document: Great and I did not feel inhibited in any way. I can store most types of documents.	Same as iPad	Very easy and very traditional mind-set interface
	Ease of storing/availability from cloud: Stored instantly; Very good performance	I wouldn't try due to form factor	Just my desktop folder synced up and down
	New-Gen features such as add audio clip notes, click anything as image and search it not available	NA	NA

Now how did I edit this document?  Its obvious - I edited this with Evernote, cut-pasted it on Blogger's editor but will store it on Google Drive ! After all I have documents from seven years on Google Drive upgraded from Google Docs.  Reliability is higher priority than aesthetics !