The most important software in your tool kit

Quick! What is the most important piece of software on your computer, tablet and phone?
Is it your word processor? If you are a broadcast journalist, you might consider it to be your voice recording software.
I would maintain the most important software on your devices is ... Evernote!
If I had to give up Evernote or the software mentioned above, I would keep Evernote. It is just that important.
I am not an expert at using Evernote. I am barely above novice in that ranking. But I have more than 8,000 notes on Evernote and I am adding notes every day.
Here are some of the ways I use it:
1. As a word processor. I am a reporter and I don't need to format text. We use Adobe InDesign in our office for pagination and that has all the formatting I could ask for. Evernote does offer some basic formatting options, such as bold, underline and italic.
2. As a database. All of my stories, all of my reporting, all of my contact information goes into Evernote. Evernote indexes information three ways. Every word, every phrase is made searchable. You can (and should) divide your notes into notebooks. For example, I have separate notebooks for City Council, County Council, each of the three school board we cover and various and sundry other groupings. You can use tags for each note. I have not used tags extensively, but then again, I have not needed to do so. Even with 8,000 notes I can find what I need in just a few minutes or less. Evernote also has a very robust and complex search syntax, if you want to learn it. Again, I haven't needed to do so.
3. To always have my note file at hand. I access Evernote over the Internet on my office machine, I keep the local software version on my laptop and my netbook and on my smart phone.
That brings up the issue of security. Since all my notes are stored on servers at the Evernote office, what is to keep someone from hacking their system and stealing my information?
First, since time began, there has not been such a thing as "security." Crooks pick locks on buildings and bad guys have learned how to steal information stored in the cloud. But, if you have information so sensitive you want maximum security, Evernote gives you the option of making a notebook local only, meaning it is not synced to the cloud. The notebook is only available on that particular machine.
4. For document storage. I make it a practice to keep meeting agendas on Evernote. I often take photos of receipts and store them in Evernote. By the way, the words that appear in photographs are indexed and searchable, too. I even make audio recordings in Evernote. Audio used to be really bad when it was recorded using Evernote but in the last few updates, recording fidelity is much, much better.
So, how much does this cost, you ask? The answer is: I don't know how the company stays in business. The program you download to your local computer or phone is free. The program you can access on the Internet is free.
You can become a premium user for about $50 per year, and that gives you some additional features and uploads per month but you don't have to become a premium user. Many people will find the free version is more than enough for their needs.
As I said, I am strictly an Evernote novice. If you find this mildly interesting, go to http://www.evernote.com and read through the introductory material. You might be amazed!