Case Notes Software

A proper forensic analysis is rarely accomplished with just one forensic tool such as EnCase or FTK. So, jumping from one tool to another, from one operating system to another makes it a necessity to keep contemporaneous notes in one place, so they can be quickly searched and referenced. I was looking for a tool that would be lightweight and easy to use. I have found a nice application called CaseNotes from QCC. It is a free application that runs on MS Windows machines and is designed for Computer Forensic records keeping. I have found it quite useful. Tabbed interface and MS Word like interface are very useful; however a simple spell checking and easier way to import photographs would make this application more user friendly. I like to have the formatting and spell-check of Office at my disposal, so after using CaseNotes for a few days, I have started playing with MS Office OneNote 2007. It has tabbed interface, insert day and time (ALT+SHIFT+F), password protect option, search option, easy formatting, adding photographs and can be shared with others in my office. OneNote has a nice option to export all the records to PDF. For me, this could be the way of moving away from paper based records keeping.