Microsoft Onenote - Now Free
Strange, but this news somehow slipped past Habr.
Microsoft's amazing generosity - One of the best OneNote note-taking programs is now available for free! Since March 17, the product itself is offered both as part of MS Office, and separately and absolutely free of charge, on a specially created site . Currently, versions are available for more or less popular platforms - Windows (both on PC and for phones), Mac, Android, iphone, ipad. There is also a web version. To synchronize notebooks, Skydrive is used.
My acquaintance with OneNote
My acquaintance with OneNote began with the fact that I was tired of storing recipes in hard copies - in the form of pieces of paper, notebooks, printouts and other tinsel. I didn’t want to build my own bike, and a quick search on electronic culinary notebooks showed zero point and hell tenth of the results, so the task was expanded to “what is there for convenient electronic recording?” At that time (2009), the choice turned out to be small - either Evernote (just then appeared), or OneNote from Microsoft. Evernote immediately dropped, because For its work, it required constant Internet access (it seems it requires now, even in the premium version with off-line storage of notes), which categorically did not suit me. As a result, the unknown OneNote beast remained, which was installed long ago in conjunction with other office applications,
The first acquaintance plunged into a slight shock - but is this Microsoft exactly? The product clearly fell out of the general Office paradigm, both in design and in approach to the logic of work (for example, how do you lack the Save button? Even if you kill the process through the Task Manager, OneNote did not lose anything and calmly restored its work from the interrupted place , unlike the same Word). Well, if possible, the product easily covered all my Wishlist of the time - off-line storage and work, a web-clipper, local search (including text search in pictures and photos!), Categories, tags as anywhere, and much more .
As a result, after a while I really got addicted to this product, and, besides the cookbook, I also got other notebooks on various topics - for work, hobbies, training, apartment renovation, ...
The first acquaintance plunged into a slight shock - but is this Microsoft exactly? The product clearly fell out of the general Office paradigm, both in design and in approach to the logic of work (for example, how do you lack the Save button? Even if you kill the process through the Task Manager, OneNote did not lose anything and calmly restored its work from the interrupted place , unlike the same Word). Well, if possible, the product easily covered all my Wishlist of the time - off-line storage and work, a web-clipper, local search (including text search in pictures and photos!), Categories, tags as anywhere, and much more .
As a result, after a while I really got addicted to this product, and, besides the cookbook, I also got other notebooks on various topics - for work, hobbies, training, apartment renovation, ...
Evernote Speaker
- Everything written below about Evernote is my opinion, perhaps not always correct, and based on several attempts to make friends with it (the last time - a couple of years ago). It may be that during this time something has changed, so if I am mistaken, correct it.
- I know about the existence of other web-annotators (such as Springpad, for example), but historically it happened that I got to know Evernote only tightly, that's why I mention it only later.
The origin of both Evernote and OneNote has clearly left its mark on these products. Evernote was born in the era of the boom of web services and the fashion that began to refuse fat customers (on desktops in particular) and this resulted in a one-sided development of the solution with a bias towards mobility. Cool clients on mobile platforms, a good web interface, integration with browsers - and absolutely no client on a PC, plus the inability to work without constant Internet access due to the monetization of the service (traffic limit is a strong incentive to switch to a paid subscription , which will turn into nothing when offline storage notebooks).
On the other hand, OneNote is a classic PC program made on the principle of "I carry everything with me" - huge functionality that does not depend on any external resources or services, local storage of all data, plus tight integration with the most popular office suite. Its disadvantages at that time are a continuation of the advantages - the inability to work together, the lack of synchronization between different devices (with the exception of devices based on Windows Mobile, but even then it was clear that “a friend is not a tenant”), again, the risk of data loss in case of an unexpected person in the form of a deceased hard drive ... In principle, all these disadvantages were handled by crutches of one kind or another - synchronization of notebooks through Dropbox, third-party clients for Android and IOS, backups to external storage. However, with the development of MS Office and the advent of SkyDrive,
What interesting features does Onenote have, besides being free, working with all kinds of information - texts in various forms (texts, tables, lists, scans, printouts), pictures, audio and video, handwriting input, total search of all stored information, simultaneous the work of several users, ...?
- Firstly, as I mentioned earlier, this is integration (and two-way) with MS Office. For example, in the case of Outlook, you can either send letters to OneNote or transfer tasks directly from the notebook to the Outlook calendar, and in the case of Word, you can associate notes with documents.
- Secondly, it is possible to send notes to me@onenote.com, and they will automatically be added to the notebook. Unfortunately, here Microsoft is a little too smart, because emails are only accepted from the email address associated with the Microsoft Live account (i.e. addresses like @ hotmail.com or @ outlook.com). You cannot bind mail from another domain, unless you have an account from the time when you could specify any mailbox during registration.
- Thirdly, integration with different scanners, both “iron” ( Epson , for example), and “software” ( Genius Scan ), as well as completely exotic, such as “smart” pens .
- Fourth, all sorts of minor amenities, such as the ability to print in OneNote out of the box. After installing OneNote, a new “Send to OneNote” printer appears in “Devices and Printers”, after which any application that can print can send information to the notebook.
- Fifth, ... yes, a lot of them , all can not be listed!
In total, in my opinion, Microsoft has now launched a serious competitor in the market of electronic notes (for Evernote, in particular). The product, at least, can make competitors get nervous and “shake buns”, and, ideally, it will win well-deserved love of users and market share *, because competition is good :).
* A bit of sofa analytics
I think that a ball with a completely free version will last exactly until the moment when they “squeeze out” a sufficient proportion of web-note users. After that, the monetization will be introduced (or rather, resumed), which was used at the time of the release of the OneNote client for Android - the first XXX pages / records will be stored in SkyDrive (and therefore available everywhere) for free, and then either a one-time payment or a monthly subscription ( the second is more likely). As they say, wait and see!