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Great features, incredibly easy to use & very pleasing appearance.
Pros: Easy to install, immediately checks for updates at the MS Office website.
Exceptionally easy to use - I installed it on both my XP Pro PC, & on my XP Tablet Edition slate (new toy ;). On my slate, the benefits are overwhelming - improved handwriting recognition plus far more intuitive means of writing documents than either Word or Journal offer. OneNote could also be ideal for younger children to use for homework projects etc, although the software is not ıchildishı.
OneNoteıs tabbed format is immediately obvious & understandable - coloured, named tabs for different projects at the top of the screen, with different pages / sections down the side. When created, new pages are visibly timestamped, making it very easy to find particular sections again.
Moving whole pages of information between different projects etc is an easy cut-&-paste operation. Notes are saved automatically - no need for manual saves, unless making a backup.
No doubt due in large part to OneNote, I haven't felt any need to attach a keyboard to the slate ı even although I seldom use a mouse on my PC (unless I'm surfing). OneNote really has transformed my slate into a genuinely useful tool in its own right - no need to try to make it more like a "normal" PC.
The greatest benefits were writing on the slate into OneNote, & further editing in OneNote on the PC before dragging my notes into final Word documents. The single-window format of OneNote is especially appreciated when compared to my old "system" of working on 1/2 dozen Word docs at a time!
Importing media & other documents into OneNote is also easy - & very useful to have literally everything in the one place.
I love OneNote, both for use on my PC, but especially on my slate. Without OneNote, my decision to buy the portable slate rather than a convertible tablet/laptop may have been a poorer choice.
However, OneNote is the single most useful piece of software I have seen for a long time. Especially when using a either a laptop or tablet out of the office, OneNote really is ideal.
Cons: Large filesize, even after turning handwriting to text, & with no drawings. Sending notes via E-mail can therefore require multiple mails.
Sending via Outlook is easy, but although the content was preserved, the appearance was somewhat disappointing (plain text notes appended to the resultant e-mail, although the OneNote tabs & effects were visible while I edited the e-mail).
Document import into OneNote can be slow - up to a minute for a large document. In fairness, this was using the slate, which currently has only 256MB of RAM (until tomorrow).
One benefit that OneNote would appear to offer is for drawing quick diagrams, or adding notes to them. However, after creating the main part of a chart in Word & importing it into OneNote to add some finishing touches, I encountered a problem for which I still need to look for a solution:
The drawing & written additions separate & misalign on exporting the diagram back out of OneNote again. Exporting to .doc format, the original Word diagram displays at the top of one page, & OneNote additions - which should display on the same diagram - are a mess underneath (lots of pieces, no cohesion at all).
Exporting to .mht works better - but only if viewed from the same PC it was created on...
Eventually, I went through the MS Document Writer & Document Imaging rigmarole, & finally managed to create a .tif that displays the diagram as a whole. However, it's far too small (OneNote displays text & items somewhat larger than Word does - if it hadnıt already been late, I might have noticed this before I began, which could have been useful). At this point I was too sleepy; I gave up for now & went to bed.
I should point out that these are issues encountered on my first day using OneNote; as an IT worker, Iım generally fast at finding limitations in software, pushing limits that many people might never find in a product. A little more practice with the "fiddly bits" will pay off - & I might eventually get around to looking to see whatıs in the help files, too ;)
Posted: 15-Mar-2005 09:52:40 AM
