BookFactoryBlack Engineering Notebook - 96 Pages (.25" Engineering Grid Format) 8" x 10" Engineering Lab Notebook Black Cover Section Sewn Hardbound (EPRIL-096-SGS-A-LKT4)

So I pretty much use these things exclusively for business note-taking. I work in software engineering and diagramming things comes along with the job. Graph rules are pretty much a necessity. These Engineering Notebooks have a table of contents in the front that one can fill in as you go or when the book is done, and there are sign-off spaces and disclosure attestations on every page - also, you get a "continued from page:" on the top of every page ("continued from page:" at the bottom), which allows you to flip back & forth through writing or diagrams that may be dispersed through the book among other stuff you don't want to pay attention to at the moment. I've used a few flavors of these hardcover notebooks in the past - and I used to have a thing for the ones with the ribbon bookmark - but I have settled into this format and it works. I'm well past 20 volumes in this style of book by this time. It reminds me a lot of the lab notebooks I used to keep when I was doing work (when I was a young man) in chemical engineering, actually, and there's a certain comfort in that. The only drawback is that it's a bit on the spendy side, but they are durable and well-constructed. Some of my old friends have told me that they prefer the hardcover graph-ruled notebooks with perforated pages, but I've had those at points in time and I always end up stressing the perforations with repeated page-flipping back & forth and I've had a few pages rip our unintentionally... it's nothing that some scotch tape can't fix, but still an annoyance. I just ordered a couple more of these - each one lasts about six months - and I'm good-to-go for another year. I recommend these to anyone that's a slave to handwritten notes in business - especially if you find that you need to retain your notes for future reference and need a consistent note-taking framework that you can use add onto over time. Looks cool and science-y, too.

I had a boss who was crazy (literally...she is now in a mental hospital). She would constantly tell us one thing (or nothing) and then crucify us when we didn't meet her expectation. I wasn't a big notetaker at the time and you would typically find more doodles than words on my pages. Finally when she screamed at me for not delivering a report she asked me not to distribute and then proceeded to deny the direction challenging me to show her in my notes where she said such a thing, I changed my approach...drastically.Now I take very detailed notes for work. Open one of my books and you will find notes, charts, graphs, all done by hand. I was, for a long time, a comp book guy (still am for home use). But in addition to the slightly less-than-professional look and the fact that the paper quality is so thin, I was not pleased with the results when used for work.This BookFactory offering however is perfect in the following ways.+ PAPER: The paper is thick enough quality that my many highlights don't completely obliterate the text on the opposite pages. There is bleed through, certainly, but only in the areas where the highlighter/marker/etc. pauses too long on the page and blots. I'm not a cut/paste kind of guy so I am unsure how pasted graphs, etc. will hold but given the high quality paper used I suspect it would not be an issue.+ BINDING: As a 168 page hardcover I had concerns. However, as advertised the book lies perfectly flat no matter what page you choose and there has been no separation from the spine (I have owned three of these so far).+ WRITING AREA: The grid area does not bleed to the page edge but is, instead, in a 7" x 8.5" boxed area. I have smaller handwriting and found this to be ample but your results may vary.+ OTHER: This product treats notebooks as they are...extensions of intellectual property. As such it views them as legal documents including ample instructions on best practices for use, signature boxes per page, numbered pages, and a space for a table of contents. While most will not use all of these, having a table of contents you can use for your notebook will quickly move from novelty to necessity after you have used it once.A great product that is surprisingly worth the above average cost. Until there is the perfect tablet equivalent of a notebook and a fine tipped stylus, there is no better solution for notetaking.

Product: 5 stars, exactly what I needed! Perfect paper weight, not too thin or too thick, quality binding and hardcover too! Great price for the quality in my opinion.Service: 2 stars, the product arrived with a good chunk of pages (15) creased back at the corner and two of them ripped up a bit at the bottom. This seems to be because the book was not secured well inside of the cardboard box which it was shipped in, and got caught on one of the inner cardboard flaps on the bottom. Not damaged enough to warrant the hassle of a return for me however just keep in mind that Amazon will not package this well when shipping so if it will bother you to have some pages not be completely perfect look for this (great) product elsewhere.

I bought this as I got tired of using the Red & Black brand notebooks my job kept buying for us. My deciding factors for purchasing this were the grid-ruled pages and the table of contents with pre-numbered pages. The table of contents feature helps a lot with keeping my notes for work organized and saves me time from thumbing through it to remember where I wrote something down. Each page also has reference fields to "tie" pages together when a project needs to be picked up on another page after filling out some other information in between those two pages.It may be a bit overkill for how I'm using it, but it's a really nice book for taking neat and organized notes.I bought the 92 or 96 page 8.5" x 11" version and really feel I should have bought the largest size (168 pages?) so I wouldn't have to change books as quickly.

Could use more pages, but overall does the job for what I need.

The cover curls a bit now it's getting colder but otherwise still very nice