Evernote is horrid, too-heavy crap. I’d rather (and do) use Google Docs for the purpose instead of Evernote.
I don’t know what ‘heavy’ means in regards to Evernote. I love it and have been living off it for a couple of years. It runs fast on any remotely modern phone, as does the PC client. You can ignore features you don’t want. I just made a few notebooks and drop notes in there. The ability to add the occasional image is very helpful as well.
I’m with you, mono. It starts up fast enough that I’ve never missed taking a note that I’ve wanted, and it’s just so damned ubiquitous that I can’t help but love it. Every app I can think of lets me send notes to it, and every browser supports it as an extension/plug-in/what-have-you.
There’s a ton of UI chrome. The web version is this three-pane thing with lots of organization, and when I make a new note, I have like a title and a toolbar and all that jazz. Compared to light-UI things like Keep or Workflowy, it’s just really heavyweight. It feels more like Google Docs than like Keep.
Workflowy looks neat. I wasn’t aware of it.
I get a lot of utility from snapping images and filing them in Evernote. I’ve even used the audio recorder on rare occasion. Between the Chrome Evernote clipper app, in conjunction w/ the Clearly chrome add-on which strips away everything out of a page but the actual article and relevant images and send it directly to Evernote, it’s super useful. It also runs snappy on any computer, browser or phone you might use it on. Hardware’s at the point where it’s rare that app ‘bloat’ is about actual performance rather than your sense of aesthetics.
I get it for those who want plain old text and prefer apps that aren’t busy.