The program itself is not really hard to use, but occasionally I get in contact with a user of the program, and then find out they are missing out on some key functions, hence this small tutorial in getting you up and going. If anything is still unclear to you, just let me know, and I will try to get it into this tutorial.

1) If you haven't already, download and install the program.

2) Now start the program. The first time you start the program there will be a new database created for you with a fictional Note. If you already have a database, click the button on the bottom of the program and open your database.

3) Time to add a new tasting note of our own! Click the New Note button right under the list view. Proceed with filling in a distillery name (any will do). Fill in 6.9 for the score. On the color field you can enter the color of the Whisky. Tip: hold your glass against the white textfield of the bought at field. This way you will always have a consistent white background, unaltered by artificial light, and you can compare the color directly against the color bar. Keep filling in a number between 1 and 100 until the blue bar ends at the color that best fits your malt. Fill in any other fields you like.
Note: On adding a new note the default action is that the new note will be automatically selected. Somehow, on some systems, this is not working correctly. This is a known issue, and if it happens to you, simply open the configuration panel (button config bottom program) and tick the "reverse new note" box.

4) Your note is still not stored in the database. Each time you fill in a new note, or adjust a existing one, you must click the Save Changes button bottom right to actually store the data. So please do so for our new note.

5) On the top of the listview you can see the names for the columns, Distillery, Expression, Score and Comments. Clicking these columns will order your notes alphabetically on that value. Clicking it a second time will reverse the order.

6) Another powerful feature of the program is right under the listview: Filter Notes. This function lets you quickly make a sub-selection based on what you type in there. Fill in Glen for example, and Note's are left with "Glen" in the name.
This might not seem impressive, but if you have several hundred of notes, and quickly only want to see all your Ardbeg Notes, then you might see the potential here. Also be aware this filter searches through the entire Notes entries. So if you want to look at all the notes you ever gave a caramel description too, you can. And to search all Ardbeg's notes where you used the word caramel in you would use: ardbeg caramel.
This function does not alter any data, it only shows hides notes that does not fit the search pattern. And ofcourse you can use the ordering options of the listview on the results of a filter action.

7) Above the Save Changes button there is a list of other buttons. The first three let you collect Notes, and then print them out on paper. Just select a Note from the listview you want printed, and click the button. You can select a second one, or just as many as you like. Once done, pressing the will print all the selected notes on your printer. If you made any error during selecting notes, the button will empty the entire list.

8) The button will copy the current selected note to your Windows Clipboard. This is handy for example if you want to paste a note in a e-mail, or on a forum on the Internet. Simply click this button, select your e-mail (for example) and press the CTRL-V key combination.

9) Now let's sent in a note we made to the online database. Select a note from the listview (please use one you actually made and filled in ;)). Make sure you filled in your name, e-mail address and language on the configuration panel. Press the "Config" button bottom left on the program and check. Close the configuration panel by pressing the X button top right. Now click the "Submit" button near the "Save" button on the lower right part of the program. Soon a browser window will open, and tell you that your Note is submitted. Note that a Internet connection will have to be present for this function to work!
Additionally, there is a "Search" button besides the "distillery" text field. Clicking this will open a search for the distillery name you filled in on this website. Handy to compare your note to other notes made by others!

10) One smart thing left to do is making the database your own name. Press the button and enter a name of your choice there. When done, you might see the program automatically made the database you just saved the new default database. By this way you prevent for example accidental overwriting your database when you have a friend over with his database, or when upgrading. Besides, your own name in the program-bar is much cooler then notes.data anyway ;)

11) Some tips:

Save a backup to a floppydisk regularly!!! Software remains software, and errors do occur, which can result in your database being rendered useless. This does not necessarily have to be a error in PeatFreak's Notes, but can be coming from Windows too, or even a entirely unrelated program. If you worked hard to get your hundred+ tasting notes in this program, and then loose it due to a bug, you'll thank me for this tip ...

Use "normal paper" tasting notes as well. You wont be able always to take your program along to each and every N&T session you go (unless you have a small laptop maybe?), and type over your notes once home. In this case in the event your database gets lost, you will always have a hardcopy as backup as well.

I have a separate field for Expression and Distillery. In Distillery I would fill in the name of the distillery (doh), and in expression more information about the Malt, like year distilled, age, etc. When the Malt is a independent bottling, I use the Distillery field for that name, like Signatory for example, and use the expression field for the name of the malt, and all other information. How you want to do it is entirely up to you ofcourse!