Microsoft OneNote
Recently I was looking on TigerDirect for some computer parts I planned on buying to build a new PC (after having my current one for upwards of probably eight years). I found that “Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007″ is there marked down to a very decent price for “Black Friday”. I upgraded my laptop to Windows 7 (ordered when Amazon.com had the pre-order discount) so I can keep up with how things will one day be when businesses can’t keep using Windows XP anymore. So, why not Office 2007?
I noticed Office includes “Microsoft OneNote” which I’d never heard of. Reading up on it, it sounds like it could be some good software. I decided to try out the 60-day trial version. It’s interesting, the web site for the trial version is basically a big advertisement to buy it, with a little “No thanks, proceed to trial” text at the bottom. The first time I clicked this text, it still took me to the shopping cart, even. On my second try, after the first five minutes or so before I even found that link to begin with, after having to sign in to live.com, after having to create another account to be able to download the trial, I was well on my way to downloading the 200MB installer for said trial. Definitely a lot more time and effort than I’m used to when it comes to getting a software binary package.
Installation was interesting. One click on the installer would run the installer, and nothing would happen. When I executed the file as administrator, the installer started up. Then it closed. And…nothing. Actually, the “give me the 25 character product key” windows has opened underneath all my other open windows… With that pasted in, next is the license agreement. This tells me there are three sets of license terms, and only one applies to me. They really could use a table of contents with links to each set of license terms, which are for if the software is bought from a retailed, or pre-installed on a computer (OEM), or bought as a download (media-less license kit).
During the installation, I received a reminder that I had four days left to activate Windows 7 if I wanted to continue using all its features. This is because the key failed during Windows 7 installation. I input the key for this, and tried to verify it (with OneNote’s installation finishing in the background). This time I received a useful error message: The key is only for upgrades, not for clean installs. And I’ve already completely wiped out the OEM Vista install to install Windows 7. I guess I’ll be calling tech support sometime, but not at 6:30PM on Thanksgiving day. Onward to OneNote! (May as well, as the Windows 7 activation window suddenly closed.)
Running OneNote brought up a menu where I could either activate the software to unlock its full features, or I could convert to the full version. Um, okay. I went ahead and activated, which meant the software had sixty-five days until it would expire.
Next comes a pop-up with Microsoft Office privacy options. Alrighty. Good to get that kind of thing taken care of now, in case I decide to buy Office 2007.
All right, so I’m looking at OneNote.
It says I can type anywhere, and gives an arrow pointing somewhere for me to type my name, which I’ll then be able to move around. Clicking there and typing…doesn’t actually type anything out. Maybe they don’t allow editing the demo page in the trial version? That seems…not right.
OneNote puts note-taking into a real-world context of notebooks which are separated into sections (like having dividers in a real notebook with colored tabs at the top or the side), and pages.
Like with many note-taking programs, OneNote also saves all data input as it’s added. Data is saved in files within folders, making them easy to navigate in a file manager, such as Explorer. Unfortunately, a binary format is used (rather than, say, XML). We’ve reached a time in computing power where we don’t need to rely on packed-in binary to store file data.
One appeal of software such as OneNote (as well as the KDE3-based software, BasKet) is that it allows inputting notes of different kinds on one “page”. You can put pictures, bulleted item lists, spreadsheets, writing using a tablet, pieces of web pages (including a link to the page where it was copied from), and more. Region screenshots can easily be created and added through the Win+S keyboard shortcut.
Another appeal is the ability to search through all data. I can see this as being a must-have feature, especially when it can even find text in scanned images/photographs, etc.
At this point, I was ready to create a new “notebook” in OneNote and add some sections and pages to see how smooth the interface was for putting down information. And I would have done just that, too, except the trial version it turns out is definitely “read-only”. This means I can see what content in OneNote looks like, but I cannot try out using the software in the trial…
I was planning on adding some screenshots of OneNote in use and going on about what it was like to use, but apparently I won’t be able to from the trial version.
