Hello OneNote!

If you signed onto the internet today there is no doubt you know Microsoft released the Office 2007 Beta 2. This beta is now available to all customers so I got my first hands on experience with the new OneNote. Before MindManager, OneNote was my favorite note-taking tool. It's flexibility and features made it a terrific program to use with my Tablet PC. Well it's been quite some time since I revisited my old OneNote friend and I was pleasantly surprised with some of the new features. Almost anyone that has had an interest in OneNote I am sure has spent time looking into them but actually using them is a totally different situation.

I have a few months before my last year of college starts and when it comes to picking a note-taking application it's going to be quite the battle. MindManager will dominate in the organization situation but when it comes to taking notes in class I often feel OneNote's ability to write anything I want anywhere really felt more like a notebook to me and thus was a much more familiar and comfortable note-taking experience. I've spend a lot more time with MindManager recently so my comfort level using it to take notes in class has dramatically increased but I think there are still times where MindManager is just more difficult to work with.

Here are some of my favorite new features (and some old) that I really miss out on with MindManager

• Searchable Pictures: for someone who is always inserting scanned and digital pictures this is an absolute dream! OneNote also seems to handle pictures much better than MindManager as MindManager sometimes causes my pictures to go blurry, something I never could figure out.
• Easy to select pens. Nothing new but having that pen toolbar easily allows me to switch ink color with ease and this is really invaluable when teachers use multiple color chalk or you want things to stand out. I could change ink color or font color in MindManager but it's just not as natural and often more cumbersome than I would like.
• Synced Audio Recording: I really missed this feature when trying to take class notes with MindManager and with the upcoming ability to possibly search my audio recordings I can see this as a huge time saver.
• Full Screen Feature: This button is so cool! With an ultraportable Tablet PC screen real estate is always something to be desired. With the ability to hide the two side bars I feel like I have so much more space to write on. It even keeps my pen toolbar on the bottom so I have everything I need to take notes! Although this is just a simple button it really makes me feel like I have so much more space!
• Drawing Tools: Drawing with your pen has always been great but with drawing tools entering the field I can easily insert these objects in a formatted way. The ability to create flow diagrams also seems so much easier with these features.
• Screen Clipping Tool: Again nothing new but when I want to easily insert images from a document or web page it is easy to just take a clipping. With MindManager I either had to open up SnagIt or the Microsoft Clipping Tool. When your trying to be efficient this again is a nice button to have. In addition with screen clippings now searchable images become that much more valuable. All those clippings of tables will be searchable! I love it!
• Multiple Notebooks: With this new feature I can have a "notebook" for each class. OneNote always felt very natural and did a good job of reproducing that paper notebook feeling but the ability to separate classes now with indivdual notebooks I feel will make this experience even more pleasant.

Ok that's enough for now. As you can see I forgot about many features that MindManager just does not have. Although they are two totally different programs they can be used for similar activities, like note-taking. I love MindManager's free flowing map concept and ideas are much easier to visualize this way but some of those fancy new features in OneNote are making the choice much more difficult.

Many screencasts and demos have been created showing off the new Office 2007 applications so I am debating whether a Dorko Demo of these features would be worthwhile. I am open to suggestions so if you would like to see one drop me an email or leave a comment. I plan on making at least one Dorko Demo about setting up your notebook as this was something I did a number of times with students and new computers last fall. I think this would be particularity helpful for anyone that wants to dip into the world of digital notebooks next fall.

Well hope everyone is enjoying the new features and Beta as much as me!

posted by Jason Dorko at 9:42 PM 0 comments links to this post