In a couple of weeks OneNote 2003 will be available on the market - as a standalone product and bundled with Tablet PCs and, perhaps, other hardware.
If you work with ideas, and use the Windows platform, then I really do urge you to take time to check OneNote out. I very nearly added, "It's brilliant". Oh well, I guess it's too late to take that back.
I have been working with OneNote for about 6 months, or maybe a little more, and it has revolutionised how I capture ideas. As a writer I need to capture snippets of ideas and bring related information together to make some sort of coherent article or book. OneNote is superb for helping in that task.
My all-time favourite application was the long-lamented Lotus Agenda. It was a fabulous program (with a long and steep learning curve). OneNote is far easier to use from day 1 but it has plenty of subtleties that you need to work at to get full value from it.
In terms of sheer day to day usefulness to me as a writer I think OneNote has a very good chance of equalling Lotus Agenda in my affections.
Not surprisingly in a version 1 product not everything that I want to see is there yet in OneNote 2003. But the version 1 functionality is already immensely useful for ideas capture.
The benefits that OneNote brings to ideas processing compare to how word processing supplanted a typewriter.
I won't often be this enthusiastic about a software product. Take heed!
Posted by Andrew Watt at October 5, 2003 01:06 PM