Last time we played D&D I played a wizard, and I just typed up a spell list in Excel. One worksheet per spell level, all formatted the same way (landscape, narrow margins, all columns fit onto one page).
I had columns for name, saving throw type (if any), range, duration, area, components (VSM/F), the page number and book the full spell description could be found in, a brief summary of the effects (including any expensive foci or components required), and then a Y/N column for whether it was affected by spell resistance. ...That last one got added after we started to hit the levels where spell resistance started to show up, because before then I didn't know I needed it.
Anyway, the final version of those worksheets basically covered all the information I felt I really needed to have on-hand when playing. (I marked it up with pencil later on to keep track of which spells were in which spellbook, but never made it part of the "official" worksheet.) In practice, this worked out almost perfectly for our game, since it kept my spell list legible and readily accessible; any time I needed to decide what my wizard was memorizing or which spell to cast, I could read off the important stuff right away without having to fumble through three or four different books.
Assuming you don't find a freeware or commercial software package that does all of that for you, you might consider advising your players to try the same thing. After the initial hassle of getting it formatted the way I wanted, updating it was a breeze: five minutes in front of the keyboard typing in whatever new spells I'd acquired, print out new copies of the worksheets for those spell levels, and I was ready for next week.
The only real downside to it is that it's utterly impractical for clerics, druids, or similar casters, since they have access to so many spells. We never found a good answer for that problem: our cleric's player tried spell cards, but she found that there were still too many to keep track of.
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and besides, she kept losing cards
ryan
