levenger circa quality?

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After reading some old (a year ago) threads and reviews about the Levenger Circa product I was really interested in trying it out for GTD. I decided to go by a Staples and look at their version to check out the different sizes before I ordered from Levenger. I was really surprised to find them to be very poor quality. The pages stuck on the rings and folding everything back in order to have a single flat writing surface was difficult and made the whole system impractical. I have yet to read any complaints about this. Does anyone know if it is a problem also with the Levenger brand? Also I haven't read any recent posts about using the circa for GTD so I'm wondering if people are still finding it useful. Thanks!
 
Circa

I've used the Circa products and I find they are of good quality and easy to use. I haven't had any trouble with folding the cover and pages back to get a flat writing surface. The quality of the paper is excellent.

Unfortunately, I decided I didn't want to spend $14 for one notebook, so I went back to regular old top bound steno pads from Office Depot for my intake device.
 
I have a full sized Circa notebook, along with the basically mandatory hole punch, and it's very high quality. If you fill it beyond it's capacity, the pages stick a little, but if you keep it reasonable, they work great.
 
I've had my Levenger Circa for nearly a year and have found it to be of extremely high quality. I can't imagine trading it for another system -- paper or electronic.
 
Remember, the pages that you see at Staples are not the Levenger paper, it's the Rollabind. The paper is not as high a quality as the Levenger. However, I find it interesting thay you find the Staples/Rollabind stuff to be of poor quality.
 
Thanks everyone. When I tried out the Staples version, even the front cover was too stiff to move around the disks - it was very frustrating. I tried rotating the disks in place to loosen things up but still had problems when I tried to move more than one page at a time. For tabbed sections to work, you need to be able to turn directly to a section rather than going page by page. I couldn't tell if the problem was with the disks or with the paper - so that was my major concern with the rollabind technology in general.
 
Staples' Version Overload

The Rolla folders at our local Staples were too full / thick for the discs, making it difficult to turn the pages. The cover, of course, is not as good quality as Levenger's, but the pages should flip easily. You can try taking some of the pages out of the notebook to see if things will move smoother on the discs. Save those pages for refills later.
 
I looked at the Staples Rollabinds a while back and had the same impression - just not that high of quality. I wasn't expecting Circa quality for ~$8 or whatever they were charging, but I just wasn't impressed.

I bought a Belgian (I think) brand called Atoma, that has just a basic plastic cover, but really nice paper quality. The drawback for me is the lack of a punch available - I was hoping to try to do some stuff with DIYPlanner templates and also save a little $ by punching my own paper.
 
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