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Posted by Jack Crawford
Mar 14, 2007 at 11:27 PM
I thought I’d start a new thread on this.
Here’s Steve Z.‘s original post again:
Bob Mackreth wrote:
>Would it be too much to ask for you to provide a
>similarly thorough explanation of what has caused you to decide Onenote is more
>useful? I’d be very appreciative… on my first few experiments, I found Onenote to be
>a bit mystifying.
>
Bob,
I’ll be glad to, though I suspect there are folks on this forum who have a greater understanding of OneNote 2007 than I do at this point, and may be able to add some thoughts, but here are my reasons for switching:
1. OneNote does pretty much all that MyInfo does, with the exception of the metadata functions that MyInfo has, so I’m not losing much functionality in switching, but gaining more.
2. I like the notebook metaphore that OneNote uses. It feels intuitive to me. I like how I can combine various bits of data on one page: a table, photo, text snippet.
3. OneNote has a rudimentary, but useful outlining capability within each note, which is helpful.
4. OneNote allows you to affix a “flag” to any paragraph. Flags can include check boxes (useful for creating todo lists), or questions to follow up, or projects… virtually anything. And flags can be searched for across all pages and notebooks. That can be pretty handy.
5. OneNote 2007 includes a print driver, which allows you to save to ON virtually any document that you can print. So there is almost nothing that can’t be saved to OneNote.
6. ON includes opitical character recognition, so that any image with text in it can still be searched for. Also, you can extract the text in one quick operation.
7. I like how handy OneNote is, sitting in the system tray. You can pop up a “side note” at any time to jot or capture information quickly.
8. I find the screen capture utility to be very handy… especially combined with the OCR capability.
This all said, OneNote still has some glaring weaknesses. The two most obvjous to me are: It still does not seem to handle OLE objects, which is almost inconceivable. Second, its web capture feature works fine, but you don’t get a nice clean web page in ON, but it kind of just runs out straight. This last is compensated some by the handy screen-capture function.
So that’s why I’m jumping to OneNote. I admire and like MyInfo very much, but I can do more with ON and I’m really trying to reduce the CRIMP effect on my workload.
————————
JC:
I think Steve has hit the nail on the head. ON 2007 is the first application for quite some time where I’m not really conscious of using or driving the software. I’m doing the work I need to do without getting distracted.
What creates this impression for me is:
- A clean intuitive GUI in a simple but quite sophisticated notebook metaphor we all understand
- Unparalleled connectivity. You can get anything into it quickly by using a number of methods - traditional drag & drop, a printer driver, or (for some MS applications such as Office) a one-click icon. I’ve moved to IE 7 from Firefox to give me this ON connectivity. Other companies such as Mindjet are also designing specific ON access tools.
- I’ve also gone back to MS Outlook to take advantage of the task creation functionality
- Multiple notebooks - since the 2007 version
- OCR technology means you can scan straight into ON.
- The flag system is simple but surprisingly powerful
- Web capture is generally good but varies from excellent to messy depending on the site
I don’t know the development detail but I get the impression from blogs and the like that MS did not follow its traditional design approach. The development team seemed to obtain a great deal of user feedback on various betas before releasing a surprisingly mature product to the market. The upgrade to the 2007 version is essential if you are an ON user.
Naturally, there is plenty still to improve. Steve mentioned some issues. Key ones for me are:
- stronger outlining capabilities
- improved GUI with tab sort and layout
- improved search capabilities. Currently you have a choice between native ON sorting (OK but slow) and the Windows Desktop Search indexer (dare I say, a typical inflated MS app). At this stage I’m not aware of any third-party indexer which supports ON 2007.
OneNote seems to be one of those best-kept secrets in the world of software because of its heritage. It seems to be caught between 2 stools - those people to whom anything from MS is anathema (ON is different) and those people who think ON is just for tablets (it does offer tablet support but much more besides).
In short, ON 2007 is the most useful PIM I’ve used for years. I’m currently running it in conjunction with Notemap (for heavy duty outlining) and my project management apps (Project Kickstart, Mind Manager, WBS Chart Pro) with X1 sweeping up in the background. So far, so good.
Jack
Posted by NW
Mar 15, 2007 at 09:06 AM
Jack Crawford wrote:
>- improved GUI with tab sort and layout
Alphabetical sort of pages & sections can be achieved using a powertoy (http://www.onenotepowertoys.com).
Nigel
Posted by Jack Crawford
Mar 15, 2007 at 09:58 AM
Yes there is a power toy - but it is slow & clunky. Also you can’t do things like have double rows of tabs.
The power toy factory may address these in due course.
Jack
Posted by Gorski
Mar 15, 2007 at 01:25 PM
I’m also a Onenote convert. Let me add two other features I didn’t see mentioned that are key for me:
* The ability to record audio and synch your notes to the audio. This is fabulous for a journalist such as myself: You can type notes while recording an interview, then return to your notes later, click on the play button next to any portion of your notes, and immediately begin playing the audio of that part of the interview.
* Effortless synchronization. If you create your notebooks on a thumbdrive, you can move seamlessly between work and home. Both will stay synched without requiring you to do a thing (no need to go to the menu, start the synchrnonization, click through multiple dialogs, etc. It just works). And because you actually worked from cached copies of your notebooks on your work and home machines, if you forget you thumbdrive, it doesn’t matter, because it will synch the next time you connect. You can also use this synchronization to collaborate with other OneNote users over a network, but I haven’t tried that.
Posted by Tom S.
Mar 15, 2007 at 03:47 PM
Mark wrote:
>* The ability to record audio and synch your notes to the audio. This is
>fabulous for a journalist such as myself: You can type notes while recording an
>interview, then return to your notes later, click on the play button next to any
>portion of your notes, and immediately begin playing the audio of that part of the
>interview.
I have not tried this myself yet but I have heard that ON will actually index and search for words in an audio recording. I haven’t tried it because frankly I don’t keep audio notes. But I’d be interested to know if this is true and whether it works.
Tom S.