7 replies to this topic

[werpnst8]

Have you found it useful to use both onenote and EN? I've found many comparisons of the two, so I'm not really asking which one is "better." Instead, I am curious if you use both and, if so, what kinds of projects do you use One Note for compared with EN.

(Note: I am a premium EN user and I have One Note 2010. I use EN on my windows laptop and my android tablet)

Thanks.

[gazumped]

I've used onenote and EN but while I don't mind using other software to complement one or the other in areas where they don't offer features,  or aren't the best in that field,  I saw no reason why I would use two pieces of software whose core features cover essentially the same ground.  At its most basic,  if I don't remember exactly where I left a note,  I have to search twice;  and with a big enough database (and a talent for forgetting details) not finding an item after a search doesn't mean it isn't actually there...

 

To cut out one layer of complications I dropped onenote,  because I favoured Evernote.  At least I have the satisfaction that if I get really fed up the Big Green Elephant I have an alternative app I could use!

[BurgersNFries]

I am Evernote Premium (over three years now) and have used OneNote for many years.  I currently also have ON 2010.  I use EN pretty much every waking hour (average of) in one way or another.  IMO, Onenote is better for brainstorming & bigger picture things.  IE, when brainstorming a project for work, I normally use ON to store copies of emails from everyone involved, research I may have done on a product (IE on the web) as well as notes as to whether this product will do what I think it might, research I did on our existing code to see what will need to be modified, etc.  But, IMO, it's overkill for things like addresses, birthdays/anniversaries, remembering things I may want to buy or someone I know may want to buy, smaller work issues/notes/memos, etc.

 

So Evernote is used to store things like bills, correspondence, notes regarding smaller issues/problems at work, notes about what I can & cannot feed one of our dogs who is on kidney diet (for renal failure), etc.  We purchased a home in June 2011.  It was bank owned & the settlement statement shows a deduction for taxes from 1/1/11 through 6/27/11.  I'm *still* arguing with the county on this b/c they are charging us for the full year, rather than for 6/28/11 - 12/31/11.  I use EN to keep the notes about who/what & when I talked to someone about this, including scans of the bills I'm receiving, the dates/times/phone numbers & names of the people I talked to. 

 

In a nutshell, I do not consider ON & EN as competitors.  I use ON occasionally & EN pretty much every single waking hour.  (Really!)  B/c I even have some emails auto forwarded to my EN account & often send photos from my iPhone or iPad to EN. 

[BurgersNFries]

Also, EN is great for procedures that you do only occasionally, so you don't remember them off the top of your head.  I store many notes about editing, authoring & burning videos b/c some parts of these processes I only do occasionally.  Similarly, I use EN to store the various methods of restoring data for work.  I don't have to do this often, but it's nice when I do, that I can go to EN & look up my notes & "follow along" with detailed notes & screen caps. 

[werpnst8]

Thanks for the ideas. I knew there was a way to take advantage of the best of both applications, but couldn't wrap my mind around how to do that. EN is hard to beat with its accessibility across platforms and ease of sharing notebooks with collaborators. On the other hand, ON's flexibility in terms of formatting notes is quite nice. I hadn't thought of using it as a brainstorming tool. I think I'll also use ON as a project library, of sorts. I do a lot of SAS programming and keep a collection of code on my computer, so ON would be an ideal way to save the code and corresponding sample output without losing formatting. An example of a "bigger picture" project described above.

 

Meanwhile, I've found that EN is great for the lit review on research papers where I can save each academic article with its citation in a note, type up a brief summary as text, and then I can add new notes for other articles as I stumble across them while on my tablet. Later, when I'm ready to start writing, I have my list of EN notes that let me use the lit as needed.  And the ability to send emails to EN to maintain a "paper" trail of correspondence with co-authors and editors is terrific.

 

Anyone else found a productive use for both ON and EN?

[Peter O'Kelly]

OneNote currently has stronger collaboration capabilities than Evernote, so it's more useful for beyond-the-basics group notebooks involving multiple contributors. For example, OneNote is more robust for asynchronously capturing intra-note edits from multiple users, and also provides an intuitive notification mechanism for highlighting changes new to a particular user.

 

On the other hand... many of the OneNote collaboration features require the full OneNote client, which is only available on Windows, and they also require using either SkyDrive (free with a reasonable amount of space) or SharePoint for shared notebooks, which may be a blocker for some people.

 

Overall, I use Evernote for almost all of my personal note-taking at this point, but also use OneNote for some collaborative notebook/workspace projects.

[crystalrclass]

I have been using both products for over 1 year.  I think the products appeal to people of different kinds of thought processes. 

 

Evernote is great for capturing individual thoughts, reminders, etc. Evernotes tags makes it easy to assign multiple categories to items.  I also use Evernote to collaborate with my two other blog writers (academicpkm.org) and share blog ideas, links to resources, quotes, etc. This is partially because one of our collaborators doesn't use Microsoft products.  If I depended on mobile devices, I would also prefer Evernote for the superior mobile apps, though I keep hoping that Microsoft will catch up soon.

 

OneNote I love and used first.  I have it synced with Skydrive and use it on multiple machines.  I think of OneNote as my digital scrapbook. I think in terms of folders/notebooks/etc. when I am trying to organize material.  That kind of hierarchical thinking lends itself naturally to OneNote which has an almost endless combination of notebooks, sections, section groups, pages, subpages, etc. For example, one notebook I have is Wish  List.  I have various pages for categories of items (books, cds, gadgets, etc) that I find and would like to have, but don't plan to purchase right away. When my family members ask me for gift ideas for my own birthday or Christmas gifts, I can go to this notebook to choose ideas in various cost categories for them to consider. There are also sections for me, my family members, friends, etc and so Wish List is also a list of gift ideas for others (with pictures, links to where to purchase, etc) as well as a record of what I've already given to different people. I also had a notebook for an online class I was completing.  I was able to capture lecture notes, my assignments, and other materials related to that class in an organized, class by class method.

 

These are just a few of the ways I use the two tools. Could you do all the things I described in EITHER of the tools?  Sure.  It is just a personal preference to the way each person thinks about organizing information.  It is an interesting question and one that my co-worker and I discuss on an on-going basis as she loves EverNote as much as I love OneNote.

 

[TechBarber]

My dividing line between the two systems is easy: work and personal. 

 

I would use Evernote for everything, but I work in a hospital so some of the emails I receive can be quite sensitive. As I'm not allowed to store any of this personal data in the cloud (rightfully so), I use OneNote as it is installed on my work computer and ready to go.

 

I suppose I could use a local EN notebook but OneNote is part of the "corporate plan" so it's a bit more adherent to policy.

 

Both work really well, although I question how busy OneNote could get after a year or so. I guess I'll see when I get there.