[BrianEatWorld]

I agree with the point about the benefits of physicals notes, but I still don't understand what is so special about Moleskines. Maybe it was just because I was an early hire and not a founder, but I actually preferred Mead's line of Five-Star notebooks. Since I had to wear a variety of hats, from eng to hr to content creation, the subject dividers were great for keeping everything straight. They also seem to last forever.

My only wish was that they intermingled some engineering style quadrille sheets with their college rule.

[ethanbond]

Moleskines seem incredibly overrated to me. No organizational assistance, no features (that's fine) and not even high grade paper/materials.

Rhodia/Leuchtturm1917/Clairefontaine at least feel/look awesome to write on with minimal bleed.

Edit: Just saw there are like three comments already pointing all of this out... But yeah, the minimalism isn't the problem. Minimalism without quality is an odd success story though.

[camillomiller]

Quality is there. Price might be a bit inflated, but that's marketing. While I agree that there are many similar options for a book-type common notebook, I still have to find a reporter notebook that beats the overall quality of Moleskine's Reporter.

[teh_klev]

I'm very much a physical note taker, but like yourself I cannot grasp the attraction of Moleskines. Yes they're nice things but I'm constantly crossing out (only so much that I can still go back and reference if need be) and rethinking stuff on paper. At my current rate of scrawling Moleskines would be a hugely expensive habit to maintain.

Personally I prefer "Black n' Red"'s hardback ring bound note books. The paper's quite nice and there's no ink bleeding from my fountain pen (which incidentally is a cheap Parker Vector).

Maybe I'm just not artisanal enough.

[Semiapies]

You might take a look at Field Notes ( http://fieldnotesbrand.com ); they have a few different options.

[brerlapn]

Field Notes have the quadrille pages. The cover is cheaper and less durable than the Moleskin cover, but the pages hold up fine, and I'd rather have pages that don't lose integrity. If you're looking for a larger size notebook than 3.5"x5.5" then Moleskine definitely has an advantage--FN is pretty much just notecard size.