Computing has endeavoured over many years to make organising your life as simple as possible without resorting to jotting things down on a note pad and then leaving it stuck on your fridge or attached to the edge of your monitor to act as a reminder. Millions of people resort to using self-adhesive notes to keep their lives in check, but this can lead to a messy workspace or leave you in hot water if a note goes missing. With Efficient Sticky Note 1.66, you will find that the virtual equivalent of sticky reminder notes are much more helpful than their physical counterparts.

Like all of the best software apps, this is free to download and use and the developer has gone beyond the call of duty to make sure that it is compatible with every Windows operating system, from good old 98 all the way up to the latest Windows 7. The small program takes no time to install and it should be easy to use for most, with plenty of flexibility offered to expand its functionality beyond basic note-taking.

The main window for Efficient Sticky Notes 1.66 is similar in style to Microsoft productivity software such as Outlook and you can start to write a note on a familiar yellow background that resembles the real life inspiration behind this program. As you type a secondary window will show you what the note will look like when it is completed and you can save notes to your desktop so that they are always in the background and ready to remind you of those essential daily tasks.

There is a good deal of user customisation afforded by Efficient Sticky Notes with a particular focus on altering the look and feel of each note. You can change the colour of the background and even alter the opacity of the note, so that it is as bold or subdued in your field of vision as you wish. When you write a note you can save it for later rather than immediately viewing it on your background. You can also attach files to specific notes, so you might have a document that needs attention and by associating it with a reminder note, you will be able to quickly address it when you have time.

Although you can enter quite a lot of text into a single sticky note, it is sensible to keep things down to a minimum, as too much writing will make things unclear. This does highlight the main problem with this program in its current iteration, as it might have been more useful to provide users with the option of cutting down longer notes to a single phrase or sentence and then revealing the entire text once clicked. Once you get used to the system, it is perfectly useable and since it is free there is nothing to stop you working with it, so hopefully future editions of Efficient Sticky Note will augment its already comprehensive list of features.