Describing OneNote

Blog

Chris Pratley, a OneNote team member from Microsoft, does a good job of giving ideas on how to describe OneNote to people who don’t have it. I use OneNote constantly. A lot of the ideas that Chris describes on how he uses his OneNote is how I’ve used it as well. When I first got my tablet I was looking for good applications that used the power of ink (the main benefit for a tablet in my opinion). I liked Journal, but it had quite a few limitations. I downloaded OneNote and gave it a shot (via a Beta copy at the time), and from there bought a copy as soon as it was released.

What I use it for at work:

  • Tracking projects at work (software design and coding)
  • Taking meeting notes and recording changes to requirements, etc.
  • A way to share key decisions and documentation (by exporting to .mht and emailing them or posting them to a share).

What I use it for personally:

  • Keeping Travel information together (like Chris was saying). I planned our trip to Scotland in OneNote and (since I had the tablet with us during the trip to copy pictures from my camera to at the end of the day) it served as a journal of the trip as well.
  • Keeping shopping lists and Christmas lists in one place and a checklist of who/what we need to buy for.
  • I use it to store passwords (with the page the passwords are on also password protected). I’m not proud of this usage as I’d really like to have an encryption program storing them, but I haven’t found one I like or gotten the urge to write my own yet. But OneNote services quite well for this.
  • Keeping track of Personal project ideas, whether they be code applications, home projects, game data, or article ideas.
  • Store recipes I find interesting on the internet or fromwww.topsecretrecipes.com.
  • Keep a wish list of equipment I want buy, toys I’d like to have and information about buying decisions so that my wife and I can go over it and make a good choice on what to get (for large decisions like cars, baby stuff, etc.).

As you can see there is a lot of stuff I use OneNote for. The two most used applications on my tablet is OneNote and Outlook (followed by VS.Net).