Google Notebook vs OneNote
Google recently launched their Google Notebook AJAX web application. I’ve been waiting for this application, because I’ve found it very useful to keep all my notes in one place. I was finally able to get my hands on it, and I was pretty disappointed. For someone who has never used a note taking application, they’ll probably love it, and I highly recommend that they use it. However, it just doesn’t give me the power that OneNote has. The web technology just isn’t sophisticated enough to handle complicated usage scenarios.
I also did some searching to see what other people thought. People liked that the Google Notebook was free (vs $100 for OneNote). OneNote is also not very good for sharing notes between remote computers. I did get that working by using Grove.NET, but I would like to see the functionality built in.
The decision becomes really easy for me after taking a look at this video, which shows off some of the new features in OneNote 2007. The Outlook<->OneNote integration will be better than sliced bread. Honestly, how important is sliced bread anyway? Anyway, in case you haven’t heard, Outlook 2007 will have a killer feature that allows you to view your tasks and appointments together, very awesome. To integrate with that, you will be able to create flags in OneNote that show up in Outlook. Conversely, you can create notes in OneNote that link to Outlook. The closer everything is connected, the better. If I want to know what a meeting was about, I want to be able to click on it, and read my notes.
Google Notebook does have some interesting integration that would be difficult for OneNote to duplicate. If you have the Firefox extension installed, you can click on a search result, and it will add it to your notebook. It also shows you if you have taken notes on a particular result. Personally, I would never use that feature. I can understand Google’s perspective as a search engine, but from my perspective, I would rather see it integrated with the Windows applications that I use.
I think that it’s going to be nearly impossible to replace OneNote for a lot of people simply because of the amazing integration. When you go with Microsoft, that is the blessing, and that is the curse.
The link is broken. It says there is no directory called ‘Notebook’. You can however get there via http://www.google.com/gn.
I am a student, and web designer for small businesses. I use both and have personally found they are equally good in different areas. I personally don’t use the integration functions that Microsoft provides. OneNote is handy for taking notes in class and the organization of notes. In fact I use to document ideas about anything I think of. However, the remote access of google notebook is unsurpassed. Google provides many applications that can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. It has the ability to store my Microsoft documents online, as I frequently use different computers, though I have a laptop. I know this is extremely improbable, but my greatest desire is for Microsoft to integrate Google, or for Google to take over Microsoft. As for idea developments, I wish OneNote had a mind map function, like FreeMap. It’s open-source, why can’t they steal it and change the code?