Electronic Log Books are Grey Patterns related to Log Books because:
You easily lose them
You can't take them with you everywhere
They probably don't have legal value
Paper is the media with longest life
May tie you to specific application, operating system, and/or device
But,
There are also benefits over paper:
Easy to duplicate/backup
If they are on the network/web, you can access them from anywhere you have net access
If they are on the network/web, other people can access them
Searchable, indexable
Easy copy-and-paste from/to other electronic documents
Encryptable
Less physical space and weight
Easy to update/reorganize
See also
and with logs created as .html: Wiki Batics
You easily lose them
Since I started keeping many records electronically - either on my Power Book or on my PDA - I find it's easier to file and retrieve records, myself.
You can't take them with you every where
You can if they're on a Palm Pilot or other portable device.
They probably don't have legal value
Electronic documents do have legal value - just ask Microsoft about its emails.
Actually, this is one objection to an electronic log book that some people can't ignore. Some professions, positions, and activities do require a handwritten pen-and-paper log book, and a typewritten or computer-printed log won't be accepted. It's stupid, but that's how it is. If you have such a position, and something happens that requires you to show your written log, and you don't have one, you can be in a lot of trouble. Thankfully, things are changing, but some people are still stuck in the Dark Ages. -- Kris Johnson
Interesting. What sorts of professions, positions, and activities?
Some government agencies require contractors to maintain handwritten time logs. If your company gets audited, and you don't have the handwritten original logs on hand, things get unpleasant. -- Kris Johnson
Truckers often have to keep detailed hand written log books for their employers and the highway patrol. Of course, most have two...
My wife (who is a biotechnology research scientist) is required to keep hand-written logs (not time logs). This is for possible patent disputes, perhaps years later. You need to be able to prove they were written when you claim they were. -- Paul Hudson
In such cases, the logs are not even yours; at the end of the day, the newly written pages get signed by a supervisor, and when the logbooks are complete, they get stored away in company libraries. Everything has to be written in them, even things I would put on the back of an envelope.
Paper is the media with longest life
... And it's also the media that piles up the most over time. You'll need to do a little more work to maintain your electronic files - backup systems, occasional system migrations once every few years - but for me the ease of use and organization is worth it.
With constant (even if slow) replication (sort of Refactor Mercilessly), digital data can outlast anything, since it can be transferred to new physical media with near zero cost. A dying language or a fundamental change in what people consider text etc would of course prove problems, but they would destroy paper copies as well. Then again, there are photo copiers and scanners that can provide some of this for paper logs. Even without more effort, any given Use Net article today has a good chance of outliving an average printout or book in raw media age because of archives already in place, for example. (This is just a note and I am a fanatic on paper logger myself).
May tie you to specific application, operating system, and/or device
Electronic sounds good, but you need to be sure you can access them 10+ years later (which possibly means keeping old systems going). -- Paul Hudson
We're talking about text-based logs, though. A text file from a thirty-year-old CP/M machine should still be readable today. You would want to think long and hard about using a non-text-based format, though. -- Brent Newhall
Are you sure you can read that thirty-year-old CP/M tape or disk on the machines you have today? I have a lot of 5-1/4" floppies with stuff on them, but no machines that can read them.
I still have 5.25" floppy drives today, in the year 2002. Besides, I'm worried more about accessing antiquated software systems than antiquated hardware. I'm assuming that old logs would be copied to new hardware and storage mediums as old hardware becomes obsolete. -- Brent Newhall
I would be surprised if you could not find an emulator for CP/M , if you ever needed to grab stuff from its filesystem.
The CP/M or whatnot format floppy should have had its data replicated and migrated to another system when the user abandoned CP/M. And this for each time the system changes and perhaps each time a new storage medium is adopted etc. It's part of the process. Neglecting this obvious maintenance is a common form of If It Is Working Dont Change Anti Pattern.
Example electronic log books:
PDAs (Hand Held, Palm Pilot, Handspring Visor)
iTeamwork (www.iteamwork.com 
), a free web-based to-do list and project tracking tool.
Electric Notebook 1.3 (lincoln.midcoast.com ). Windows program. Hasn't been updated for a while but meets my simple needs.
The Personal Wiki software of your choice.
Microsoft One Note (office.microsoft.com ). I know it's a non-option for a lot of people, but we're a MS shop and it is fairly decent with sharing notebooks over broadband.
Keep Truckin Electronic Logs (keeptruckin.com ). This is a free alternative to paper logs for drivers. The DOT recently made electronic logbooks a legal form of maintaining a "Record of Duty Status".
Wouldn't a Plain Text file work just as well? Then you no longer have to worry about file formats and compatibility (maybe just Unix vs. DOS linebreaks but that's pretty easily fixed). And every desktop search tool out there, even the basic OS ones, will find stuff in it.
-- Kyle Maxwell
I am currently quite happy with emacs note mode. (www.isi.edu ). I can use tex/latex and gather into print later.
-- Bill Raynor
I am using Emacs Org Mode which uses plain text files. Org mode includes tables and org bable (executable code snippets) -- Erik Pischel
See original on c2.com