It was 2011 when I was crazy and mad fan of Microsoft and related technologies. Visual Studio’s intellisense was awesome that took off the effort to code stuff in C#; certainly agree that eclipse also had a good intellisense support, but I had to delete vast major of the auto-generated code to make it useful. It was the same time, I bought my HTC Radar phone rather than iPhone 3GS / iPhone 4. I regret that decision till date; Windows Phone 7 was good but it was certainly not an iPhone. I actually realized that after 4 years when I bought my iPhone 6 [ shameless brag ] and wondered why the hell, I didn’t do it before. To my wonder, my windows phone also started to give Blue Screen error and finally didn’t even boot one fine day.

I briefly started using OneNote during early 2014 and that didn’t took off well as I felt the notes never synced and had the great difficulty of local notebooks. Later on fully switched to evernote. Everything was working as expected in evernote. I was a notes making guy since my school and evernote brought back the memories. I loved the tags, the todo check boxes was freaky awesome, tags – oh man – I love tags. More to it, thanks to the IFTTT – Do Note – I installed the iPhone app and configured send note to Evernote for random ideas and shopping list which goes and appends to the list [ numbered & checked ].

By mid of 2015 – I got mac at work. Wow – I love my job which I managed not to utter out the words and not jump up and down my desk [ there I said that ]. I literally had nothing to migrate from my Windows to Mac – Google Drive, BitBucket, Evernote – all had the clients and my data already there. Additionally I was using PyCharm .

Evernote looked gorgeous in mac platform than in Windows. All my tags, notes & notebook stacks are now available in my new mac exactly at the same state when I left it at my old machine.

Things which I felt odd in my new Evernote

1. I was an extensive user of tables and to-do check boxes. To my surprise – it got messed up big time. The tables created in my Windows looks very different than what I create it in my mac. At one time – I used to go to my Windows laptop create a table – sync it and then come back to mac and continue working on it. [ I believe the recent version update got that fixed ]
2. The intuitive pressing of the tab button for creation of new column wasn’t working 😦
3. Skitch – the companion to capture good screenshots – got synced to evernote. The good news is that they can be retrieved from evernote at a later point, and bad news is – they too contribute to the free 60 MB limit. Free Plan was good enough for me and I never had to demo / present using my notes which is part of the premium plan

Reasons why I Started considering & Continued Using OneNote [and Love It]

1. Offline support was a premium feature 😦 – Oh Man. I understand THE PUSH it would create for the users to consider premium account but I am kind of a person who will disconnect then work out the plan [ the simplest distraction free mode ].
2. Formatting was so seamless and flawless. I create a lot of notes, behind the envelop calculations and consolidate lot of details. Every single note is my live log of what I am doing – which helps keep track & focus & record of what I did. At last copying the same to mail clients [ outlook / Mac Mail ] would just be mess when copied from Evernote. OneNote didn’t even have an inch of the same problem. After all it is all Microsoft. My mails with the status reports and work updates started looking much better. I loved the consistency in experience & formatting.
3. Office 365 is strong and it is the real power – epicenter. My emails and Office Suite is already Office 365 and it is just that OneNote was very logical extension
4. The Windows version & Mac Version of OneNote are free [ in my case – doesn’t matter coz. Office 365]. Nice iPhone & iPad app to complement. Web version of OneNote – looks really neat and doesn’t give a different feel. When there is a conflict in note – the diff almost showed like GIT conflict with neat colors.

Wish list in OneNote

1. Is there any difference between Microsoft OneNote from Mac App Store and Office for Mac installation bundle – posted in quora[https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Is-there-any-difference-between-Microsoft-OneNote-from-Mac-App-Store-and-Office-for-Mac-installation-bundle?share=1&srid=ho0Y] as well ?
2. Mail to OneNote for Office 365 is not yet available.
3. The tagging support & search using the tags or Tag in general in OneNote is just a name sake feature [ at least in Mac ]. Evernote has an excellent tagging support – understand that usage and requirement of tags would depend on the user – the way one organizes it [ Data Structure 101 ]

Closing Notes

I am loving OneNote and will continue using as it smoothly cooperates with other Office tools like Outlook & Word. The feature set and capability of OneNote is promising[https://twitter.com/msonenote] and growing[https://twitter.com/OneNoteDev]. IMHO Offline support for OneNote would be the Online factor for newer users.