11 out of 11 people found this review helpful.
Best software that no one knows about
Date of Review: Nov 26, 2008
The Bottom Line: This is really great software. I recommend this software to those with 32bit windows systems only, and caution users that microsoft may just abandon this program in the future.
OneNote is Cool. There. I said it. It's a Microsoft product, and yet, it's cool. I've used OneNote now for over a year in both an academic and professional setting. Once you've used it, you'll never go back.
Basically, OneNote gives you a virtual notebook in your computer. It was designed pretty much for tablet users, but don't that disuade you. It is extremely valuable with or without a tablet computer. The software allows you to stay organized, no matter how chaotic your life is.
Each "Note" in OneNote is basically like a piece of paper. You can write, draw and type on it. You can also paste pictures and text from web pages, print documents into notes directly. At work, I keep a variety of notebooks open. As new documents arrive pertaining to this or that project, I print the document into onenote. Then I can highlight and annotate the document and organize it within a binder with tabs, etc. That way I have a copy of the document on hand at all times. Printouts, along with any notes you write become searchable in onenote, and you can control the scope of your search to a page, a tabbed section, a book or all books. You can also embed the document within a page, so you can create pages describing various documents and keeping handy links to those documents as well.
Unlike WORD, with OneNote you can write anywhere on a note page. Just click on any part of the page and start writing. This is good if you want to write in a more free formed style than word allows. Once you've started writing, there are other tools that help speed notetaking. You can make nested outlines of notes simply by hitting the tab key. You can press record and start saving an audio copy of the meeting or speaker as you're taking notes. Later, when you play the audio back, OneNote highlights the notes you made in sync with the audio playback.
One of the most interesting things about onenote is that there's no save button. You just do your writing, drawing, etc and everything is automatically saved to the notebook.
OneNote also has cool syncronization that enables you to share a notebook with multiple users. Users can simultaneously edit documents. For those with mobile devices, Onenote also offers a Windows Mobile version of OneNote. I use this to keep certain notes handy even when I'm away from my computer.
I have tried a variety of similar programs, and have not found anything that works nearly as well as onenote.
Sad Update: I just switched to a new computer with a 64bit version of windows. In this version, OneNote is unable to capture documents as a printer. This is very disappointing, because it's a key feature. More importantly, given that there's no fix for this in the works, it looks as though Microsoft may abandon the program all together.
