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Microsoft Software

Microsoft Releases Free Edition of OneNote 208

yakatz writes "Microsoft announced that OneNote, including the full desktop program, will be free for anyone who wants to use the program. A version of the program for Mac also appeared in the app store yesterday. This means that a native edition of OneNote is available for most platforms (including iPad, iPhone and Android, but not Linux or Blackberry). Microsoft will continue to offer a paid version of OneNote with 'business-oriented' features (including SharePoint support, version history and Outlook integration). The partial rebranding of OneNote also includes some new tools like a program specifically designed to make it easier to take a picture of a whiteboard.
Is this a signal that Microsoft decided that they need to compete with Apple by making their productivity applications free?"
(Over at WineHQ, they're looking for a maintainer for their page on OneNote. Anyone running it on a Free operating system? What are your favorite alternatives that are "libre" free, rather than only gratis?)
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Microsoft Releases Free Edition of OneNote

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @12:16PM (#46516615)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by danbuter ( 2019760 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @12:23PM (#46516701)
    OneNote is kind of like a heavy-duty yellow sticky program, where you can link everything together incredibly easily. It's one of the best organizational programs out there, for people like writers, etc. I honestly think it's one of the best products MS owns.
  • by herrnova ( 2534538 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @12:30PM (#46516775)
    It has the ability for both. You don't have to use the cloud support if you do not want to, it can save your notebooks where ever you want. It has built in support for Microsoft OneDrive, or you can just have it save your notebooks in your copy.com drobox etc folder.
  • by rahvin112 ( 446269 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @12:48PM (#46516989)

    It's easily one of the most flexible and IMO best products MS has ever produced. The problem is with the amount the charged for it it becomes almost worthless and it received almost no traction because MS didn't give a rats ass about it. Think evernote without the ever portion but far more flexible and with an office type interface. It's been around for more than a decade, had MS been innovative they would have been evernote, except probably far larger more widespread and in nearly every single enterprise. Instead the product was a redheaded stepchild inside MS.

    But it's always been handicapped by MS's policies of not supporting non-windows and all the typical lockout and other games they've played their entire existence. It's because of this, onenote outside small niche's has seen very little uptake and almost no one knows about it.

  • by darrylo ( 97569 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:02PM (#46517197)

    No, the free version is cloud-only.

    Go on, try creating a local notebook -- you can't do it with the free version.

    I uninstalled it after I discovered that.

  • by darrylo ( 97569 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:03PM (#46517219)

    No, if you try creating a local notebook with the free version, you're greeted with a friendly message that says that you can only create the notebook in onedrive.

  • Re:WTF is OneNote? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hadlock ( 143607 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:04PM (#46517221) Homepage Journal

    It's a tabbed version of WordPad that allows you to paste in images, spreadsheet snippets, text etc, but has Deep Hooks in to Sharepoint to create things like programmable checklists for manual tasks that email out the results. It's been around since at least 2007. In the right hands it's very powerful but most people ignore it.

  • Re:WTF is OneNote? (Score:5, Informative)

    by CohibaVancouver ( 864662 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @01:20PM (#46517413)
    Plus, if you're running a tablet like my Surface Pro you can actually write and draw in OneNote, using the tablet's stylus. The top of the stylus also has an eraser so you can rub things out in OneNote.

    It's pretty nifty when I just want to sketch something out that I will transpose into Visio later.
  • Re:microsoft account (Score:4, Informative)

    by Curunir_wolf ( 588405 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @02:40PM (#46518263) Homepage Journal

    The problem isn't needing a microsoft account (i.e live account to sync settings), the problem is that the program won't install if you are using a non-microsoft account in windows 8, which practically means you can't use this on business machines.

    Yes it will - I've done so (on Windows 8.1, anyway). You don't need a Microsoft account to use it at all, only if you want a "cloud-stored" notebook. You can store notebooks on local storage or network shares, too.

  • Re:WTF is OneNote? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18, 2014 @02:48PM (#46518349)

    OneNote is a spiritual copy of the original standalone Evernote.

    That's quite a feat, considering OneNote predates Evernote by five years.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato

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