I tend to lose track of things. That's why I like Copernic so much. While Copernic works well for finding files and even text within files, it's only good if you remember what you're looking for.
I use notepad a lot to place text temporarily...stuff like lyrics, quotes, etc but it's not great and doesn't work for images, etc.
Evernote is an easy way to keep track of all sorts of crap. It has an extremely powerful search/category system so you can find things various ways. Even better, it has character recognition within pictures that works "ok".
Here's an example of Evernote finding text within an image:
You can also highlight any part of a web page and Evernotes will maintain the format and insert the note. Here's a portion of the Evernote website front page. All hyperlinks remain active, you can select the individual images of the page in Evernotes and use them (it's not one single captured image) along with the text. Evernote also always places a link to the original page at the bottom:
Encryption is another nice option. You can encrypt some text or include images, etc:
There are some built in note formats you can use to make things easier as well:
Seems pretty nice and the UI us very well done. It remains to be seen if how much I use it but the potential is certainly there. Looks like a great place to collect a bunch of random crap that doesn't have it's own place or may not be needed long term. The category customization makes it easy to stick everything you need from a particular project in the same place as well.
There's a free 90 day trial for Evernote Beta 2 so it might be worth a look:
http://www.evernote.com/en/