Ken Tompkins compares Ceres, City Desk, and Radio Userland (6 December: no permalink) He likes them all.

Ceres is my favorite. I have to use it on a borrowed -- I got it on loan just to run this software -- Mac running at 120mhz. I like Ceres primarily because it is visual; it inherits the visual modality of StorySpace.

Of course, you don't need to choose. Software isn't either/or, and none of these tools is very expensive.

Tompkins isn't confident that his non-Ivy college students will have access to computers for writing and taking notes. I believe this is a fading concern. If you're serious about college, you need a computer. Students are investing years of their lives and a small fortune from their family (and, through grants and government, from their neighbors). They're investing time they'll never find again and opportunities that will never be repeated. To impair all this for the sake of a $500 computer is, at best, short-sighted.