Seems like I've both looked for and blogged about a Stickies-like application for Windows before, but I can't find my previous entries on the subject to see what I had found. While there are many such apps for Windows, they mostly either weren't up to snuff or cost money. Still using a Windows desktop at work, so here I go again.

This Stickies app (website is a little slow) is free, has basic functionality and a few bells and whistles that might actually come in handy. Networking with your office mates allows for a sort of sticky-based instant messaging. You can put stickies to "sleep", turning stickies into alarms of sorts. I particularly like the transparency feature, which I haven't seen in a Stickies app before. Not completely intuitive to use; I've already managed to confuse myself by double-clicking on the title bar, causing it to disappear (show again by carefully trying to double-click on the teeny top border). But the overall utility and price of this Stickies app makes up for its few shortcomings. Companion applications extend it further, including Stickies Store for maintaining a drawer full of notes, networking enhancements, and command-line utilities for interoperability with other tools or scripts.

Another Stickies for Windows, which must be new since I last searched, would be perfect if it weren't for its requirement of having .NET installed (which it shouldn't need other than for it being written in C#). The app installer is 135k, the .NET runtime is 20MB. I assume WinXP already has .NET, I just didn't on my Win2k work machine.

I coulda sworn I mentioned this before, but 3M makes their own computer Post-It notes program, with a free version for Windows, as well as more featureful versions for sale with all these other common features (networking, storage and management).

Of course, it took me an hour to remember that Outlook has its own Stickies feature, which works quite well if you're required to keep such a giant app as Outlook open all the time for email and calendar reminders. This would also be why I never bothered to install Stickies apps at work, but I never seemed to get around to using Outlook's anyway. I continue to question the decision of my employer to require that we all run Outlook (or struggle with partially compatible substitutes) in an all-Linux shop, but whether I make my dev box my primary workspace or continue using Windows and Exceed, I suppose the Stickies question is moot.