Things in my previous comment being said, I have found Evernote to be useful and an enhancement to my productivity, although I have not been using it enough to warrant a subscription. I also find the (rather unobtrusive, IMHO, once you get over the initial annoyance) ads a small price to pay for the free usage and reassurance the service will not go away one day taking my notes with it.

Seeing some of the comments on this page I think it would help to clarify a few things in the description and license notes of the app:
* It is a desktop client to a web service, not a standalone app.
* The service exists in two flavors: free (with usage limits) and pro (by subscription).
* The desktop client is free, but will show ads in its lower left corner if the free service is used.

When they introduced the ads two months ago, they were only about upgrading your account, but now they're mostly about unrelated things. Stopped using it today after trying out a new update: the service was very useful, and I might have upgraded once I hit the usage limit, but there's no way in hell I'd ever support adware on OS X, my mac is not some sort of trash for them to litter.

I've stopped using it since the ads sneaked their way in.

new update of Evernote crashes when I try to use its Firefox add-on version. It was nice to use with Curio's direct recently added Evernote scrapbook.

the new version includes ads that tell you to go premium once you try to close them, but no added features as far as i can tell, so i just restored the older version using time machine.

Good concept, but seems to be struggling. What I simply hate about it is that there is no way to get your data out in bulk conveniently. Really, no useful export. What's the sense of pouring in megabytes or more of data if you have to get it out with cut and paste? Or email yourself a pdf. Honestly!

Why did my comment disappear??

I said here yesterday that the new version adds an ad banner, with an obnoxious "X" button that instead of working tells you that you can disable the ad by going premium. If you auto-update and don't like the change, the old version is moved to the trash and can be resotred.

Lets me share my notes and scratchings between my MBP and XP machines. Synchronizes efficiently so I don't have to move data. It's free for the volume of usage I make. Top notch!

The Mac client needs a lot of work. Pretty buggy, and even basic windowing functions (opening and closing) has problems.

I like the vision though. All the features on the mac app are there and look great, they just need to make it stable. The iPhone and web apps are also very cool. So I might keep it around in case the Mac app improves.