Microsoft OneNote 2003 [Old Version]
by Microsoft Software
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Software Reviews of Microsoft OneNote 2003 [Old Version]
Customer Review: Great for students!
Summary: 4 Stars
This program replaces the need for a notebook. I keep all my notes in there and its easy to search for particular notes.
Also keeps everything organized.
Great software, I recommend it highly!
Customer Review: Does exactly what it says it does
Summary: 4 Stars
I've been using this program for almost a year and like it. It's simple, well designed and customizable. The best way to explain One Note is to say it's like MS Word and Excel combined... it's a Word Processor with Spreadsheet "tabs".
The main reason I bought One Note was because I had 30-40 seperate word documents that I accessed regularly. It was cumbersome and inefficient. One Note fixed that.
Also, One Note has a good search tool, and also I like the formating options. I only gave it four stars because I wish that they included Excel tables with some basic calculating capabilities.
If you need a program to take notes, consolidate various documents and get organized, I'd recommend it.
Customer Review: Take It For What It Is
Summary: 4 Stars
I've been using OneNote for about two months now. I'm a college student and I don't have a tablet pc - I use a normal Toshiba 15.4" wide screen laptop to take notes on. I used to use Microsoft Word or OpenOffice to take all my notes simply because that was all there was. After finding out about OneNote and using the free trial I found it to be very useful for me.
Many people will complain about it's lack of features compared to a normal word processor, but you really have to take OneNote for what it is. It's a note taking program. It's not going to make you do better in your classes, it'll just help you do it faster. And to me, that's really valuable - as I'm sure any college student will tell you.
Organization:
The first thing you will deal with when you open OneNote is setting up how you want your notes to be organized. I decided to make a few folders - one for classes, one for personal, one for home & car maintenance etc. I will only go into detail about the most important one: Classes. In my classes folder I have a new "project file" or tab for each subject. For example, one tab reads Personal Finance M04, another reads Photography 10, you get the idea.
Underneath these tabs I have a blank writing space and another set of tabs on the right hand side. With the tabs on the right hand side I organize my class meetings and subjects we cover. Depending upon the class, I will make a new tab on the right for each subject (example: Investments, Estate Planning, Taxes). In other classes that do not follow a strict subject form I label the tabs with the date of the class.
Actual Note Taking:
OneNote works in a different way to normal word processors. A way which is much better because your notes are usually not printed. They live in your computer - so why leave blank margins on the sides of the page when you can use that space? This is a question OneNote answers brilliantly. I can click anywhere in my blank space to start a new text box. I can write down the main topics in one column on the left hand side and write key points and definitions on the right wherever they are applicable.
You are also able to put in drawings so you can take down diagrams from the white board and you can put in pictures. If you have a microphone built into your laptop or if you bring a small one you can record what the professor is saying and it will show up with play controls right in the notes space.
Of course, the larger the resolution of your laptop's screen the better. Having a widescreen laptop really benefits you when using OneNote because you can take advantage of it by using every part of the screen to write your notes.
Searching:
Probably one of the best features of OneNote is the ability to search through your notes with ease. For example, I can type in the word "estate" in the search box and hit enter. OneNote then instantly searches (and I mean no waiting, it's instant) through all of your notes and highlights every time the word estate is mentioned. If you have mentioned the word estate in multiple areas of your notes then OneNote will also highlight the applicable tabs so you know where and where not to find what you're looking for.
On The Whole:
I think OneNote is an excellent tool for any student, and even if you just want to keep better track of your life without having to setup a complex database. I don't think I could live without OneNote anymore. That said, it's probably not worth getting unless you can pick up a copy for under fifty dollars. If you're a student, try seeing if you can get a copy with your student discount, or if your campus's student store has it for a good price.
Customer Review: This is Microsoft?
Summary: 2 Stars
OneNote is the weakest Office product Microsoft has ever released. It has minimal features and fails to integrate in any useful way with other Office products. OneNote even fails to read Journal files, which is ridiculous for a TabletPC user. There is great potential for this product, as the basic structure for organizing files is well thought out, but the rest is amateurish at best. Unfortunately, software titles for TabletPC are still rather limited, and this poor product isn't about to woo any new users to the technology.