Even with all of today's high-tech tools, many still prefer good old-fashioned pen and paper. This is especially true for jotting down notes and reminders.

So, what if you could combine the simplicity of paper note-taking with the power and convenience of a tablet computer?

A new app, Sticky Notes for iPad, aims to fuse these two worlds – and it works, for the most part. There's a lot of room to grow, but this free app is off to a great start.

As you'd expect from an app called Sticky Notes for iPad, this free download lets you post virtual sticky notes on the iPad's 9.7-inch screen. You can select the background colour and material of your board – be it a corkboard, cloth, blueprint, wood or chalkboard, to name a few --- and then you simply tap to start a new note in landscape or portrait mode.

Type what the reminder is, such as "Don't forget to call John about the meeting next Friday." You can use your fingertip to adjust the size, style and colour of the font, as well as drag the sticky note around the board and adjust the paper colour and size, if desired (such as larger notes take higher priority).

Alternatively, if you own the new iPad, you can touch the microphone icon to the left of the spacebar on the onscreen keyboard and speak your note aloud; your spoken words will show up as text a moment later as if you typed it with your fingertips. Speaking of the new iPad, the app was recently updated to support the new Retina Display screen with higher resolution than its predecessors.

The Sticky Notes for iPad app is drop dead simple to use, whether it's to stay organized at work or at home with the family.

But it's not a perfect produc. For one, because it's digital, it's too bad you can't set an alarm on a note, so that it can ring and show up on the iPad screen when you want it to. Otherwise, you might not get the reminder unless you manually open up the app and look at your virtual corkboard. How cool would that be to see a yellow sticky note appear with a note about something you need to know, when playing a game, browsing the web or typing an email?

Secondly, there is no iCloud support for this app; imagine if everyone in the office (or family) could post notes in the app and they'd automatically show up on everyone's device, wirelessly.

Finally, it would also be great if the app supported handwriting and/or hand-drawn sketches, and such, as many other apps do.

Even with these shortcomings, Sticky Notes for iPad is a free, simple and useful app to help keep you organized. It successfully fuses "old school" paper reminders with the power and customizability of a digital platform.

Many on-the-go iPad users have discovered the touch screen tablet can be an effective tool for jotting down notes, sketching images and fleshing out ideas.

Plus, the super-thin device is easy to tote around as it's just over a pound, it turns on right away and can last more than 10 hours between charges.

Whether it's used in a boardroom, classroom or family room, note-taking apps are popular downloads from the iTunes App Store, and can be used with a fingertip, optional stylus pen, virtual keyboard or external keyboard.

If you're in the market for affordable note-taking apps with powerful features, look no further than these two picks.

PhatPad

While many offer the same core features, a new note-taking app called PhatPad ($4.99) includes handwriting recognition technology that can transcribe your "chicken scratch" into digital text.

And it works well, too. On the blank canvas, simply tap the pencil icon, use your fingertip or stylus pen to print on the screen. And it supports cursive writing, too. When you're done you can highlight the text and select "Convert to Text." Within a second or so you'll see the words as text, which you can then send as an e-mail, archive, export to PDF, print or send to a cloud service (such as Google Docs, Dropbox or Evernote).

Once your words are displayed as text, you'll see lined yellow "paper" at the bottom of the screen to add or edit your text with more handwriting. If you make a mistake while handwriting you can tap the "undo" button or enable an "erase" gesture from the options menu. It took me awhile to find out how to pull up a virtual keyboard as it's not on by default, but I found it helped edit converted text faster than handwriting. Or you can use the keyboard with this app instead of handwriting altogether, of course.

Other features found in PhatPad include: multiple pen colours, tip widths and opaqueness options (ideal for drawing); the ability to import photos or text from other sources; shortcuts that can help you draw shapes (circles, squares, triangles) or organize content into grids; and a voice memo recording feature that lets you add audio to any note you create.

The app also has a presentation mode, so you can record actions -- such as drawing a million-dollar idea and explaining what you're doing verbally -- and then share later on.

Once connected to a computer via USB cable, you can also drag and drop notes to and from the iPad inside of iTunes. Notes are automatically saved as PDF files. There is no support for iCloud at this time, but there are the aforementioned services and you can also share via Wi-Fi to compatible devices in the same wireless network.

All your notes are organized well inside the app, listed alphabetically or by date, plus you can search for keywords using the small window.

While $5 is a bit pricey for a note-taking app, PhatPad is an ideal purchase for those who still like to write instead of type, as it successfully fuses the old "paper and pen" experience with the digital age.

Knowtes

Some might argue the iPad is better at consuming media rather than creating content -- but perhaps they just haven't found the right apps?

Just ask the more than a million businesspersons, students and journalists who've downloaded Knowtes, a powerful note-taking tool ($1.99) that can be used to write research papers, blog posts or office memos.

On the surface, Knowtes (pro­nounced "notes") looks like a blank digital canvas in which to write or draw your ideas. An onscreen keyboard glides out from the bottom of the screen, which can be used in portrait or landscape mode (or with an external keyboard). As with other word processors, you can change font type, size and colour, and there's a counter for characters, words and number of lines.

At any time you can also tap the Sketch button to use one of four coloured markers with your fin­gertip on the white screen -- or import a photo to sketch on top of it, if desired. Each new document you create can be seen as a yellow sticky note at the bottom of the screen with the date and/or name of the document. Need to find a note quickly? Use search words, such as "new app idea," in the small window to pull up the relevant notes.

So far, these features might not appear that different than other note-taking apps but this tool has a lot more going for it.

For one, you can pull up a built-in web browser on the lower half of the screen and copy-and-paste content or links onto your canvas. And the formatting is automatically stripped out for your convenience. Or for those who like to multitask, you can simultaneously read news, play a game of Solitaire or check your Facebook wall while crank­ing out an essay. The brows­er lets you add bookmarks, save web pages to a reading list (to view offline) and you can annotate websites with the drawing tool.

Knowtes also offers a built-in language converter via Google Trans­late, supporting more than 28 languages. Want to convert a German website into English or an English document into Spanish? The conversion is fast and easy to use, but an Internet connection is required for this feature.

Finally, this free app supports multiple file types, including .epub, .pdf, .ppt, .doc, rtf, .pages, .zip, .rar, .xls, .numbers and even media (such as .avi video files). Speaking of files, you can export your documents via email, in iTunes (drag-and-drop functionality) or sync with various cloud services and other websites, including Evernote, In­stapaper, Google Read­er, Twitter, Facebook and others. Coming in the next update is the ability to save and share your document as a PDF and support to open documents in other apps (such as Dropbox).

There's not much to complain about with this feature-rich app, so iPad owners should make a mental "knowte" to download this from the App Store.