if you use history then this date and times stamps it for you. You do not need the date and time stamp like the notes tab.
Within the ContHist tables each entry into the history tab you will be able to identify when the entry was created, by whom, and who has altered it last. Just like you can on the contact1 and contact2 tables.
What i tell our people is not to copy and paste the date/time stamp in, because you can get this info from the conthist table. Even if they alter the date when they created it themselves, you still have a creaton date within the conthist table to tell you actually when it was created.
You have got limits on the amount of information you are able to store within the notes tab. We did have an issue off notes disappearing etc. But this may have had something to do with we were using a dbase backend, and the databse had 35,000 records within. Now we use a SQL backend.
We also found if you are reporting on the records, and use the notes tab you bring in all the notes, not just the notes you want. If you store each seperate notes within its own history entry then you can easily get this information only, if you use some sort of coding system. We use a thing we call Campaign codes.
I hope i have not confused you...
If you need any more advice then please say.