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this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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Lol, tried them about 10 years ago, wasn't impressed.
They're still around, and think this is a good move? So many other, WAY better notebook apps.
MS OneNote works well on all platforms (except Linux!) for several years now, and blows Evernote away (it's my Achilles heel).
And now apps like Joplin, Obsidian, etc, are closing fast on OneNote (and even better in some ways), and can sync with tools like Syncthing.
Obsidian + ExcaliDraw is mind-blowing. The integration is absurdly good! It can even render entire PDFs for highlighting (a bit slow but usable).
Only thing I don’t like about Obsidian is the UI. It’s just kinda clunky and obtuse. I find navigating around consistently confusing. Which sounds like a small gripe but if I can’t just open up a note taking app and get rolling I’m just less likely to take them in the first place.
Yeah, even the startup time needs some work. It's more useful for when I'm doing other work that's more involved.
I should give a try to ExcaliDraw, the fact is I usually download a plugin to respond to a need, and I'm not certain what Excalidraw answer as a need except draw
Here's the developer showcasing some of the features. He has plenty of other videos and some are more interesting than others, but they're overall pretty neat.
Having used both OneNote & Obsidian extensively, OneNote is like a children's colouring book in comparison IMO.
Not that it's bad, it serves plenty well for most people.
I think OneNote is potentially a good middle ground between something like Obsidian and something much simpler like Google Keep, but for me it adds complexity without adding enough functionality to justify it.
Not an unfair comparison, though I find Obsidian overly complex/convoluted. But I think that comes with the territory when your design philosophy is very open extensibility and using standard document types rather than a proprietary binary format like ON.
Plus OneNote is 20 years old now, was extended (after MS bought it) to integrate with SharePoint (maybe it was designed that way, I don't remember), so really is a 20th century piece of software. There are add-ons that greatly extend its capability (Onetastic, Gem, etc). So in a business environment the full desktop app with SharePoint is pretty impressive. To it's credit, I have 15+ years and gigabytes of data in it, and have never (knock on wood) lost anything, moving it across perhaps a dozen systems.
All that said... I'm moving to Joplin, lol. Trying to get away from dependence on apps I don't control (and I want a notebook that works on Linux too).
To sync to mobile devices, OneNote requires Onedrive (or setup your own SharePoint server, uggh). At least with Obsidian/Joplin, etc, I get to manage how things sync. And if I'm happy with the features in my current setup, I never have to change anything. Never know when MS will fuck up Onedrive sync, requiring a version of OneNote I can't run, or has issues.
MS OneNote lags 200-300ms on M1 pro CPU...
Ugh, Syncthing. I bet it works well for syncing between Linux boxes or even MacOS, but when I tried using it to sync between Windows and a couple of Android devices, it was incredibly clunky. I found it confusing and obtuse even though I've been a software engineer for over 20 years.
Rant over.
I keep hundreds of gigs in sync between 4 windows computers and about 5 phones, including iOS (on iOS it's Möbius). SyncTrayzor for Windows is really helpful.
It rarely has issues, when it does it notifies you of a sync conflict (it's always a result of me doing something that's bad practice, such as disabling sync for weeks on one device and making a bunch of changes).
Give it a try again. I especially recommend Syncthing-Fork for Android, it moves sync conditions into the individual sync jobs/folders. This enables me to have my DCIM folder sync to home, regardless of network or power conditions, so I never lose pictures, while allowing me to set my media sync folder (music, videos, etc from my home desktop) to only sync while on wifi, and other jobs to only run while connected to power and wifi.
Resilio is another great sync tool, works differently than Syncthing by using the bittorrent protocol. It has Sync-on-demand, which is great for grabbing media from my desktop from anywhere, Syncthing would only permit Syncthing the entire folder, with Resilio you can browse the share from your phone, pick files, and have it sync them right now.
I'd use Resilio more, just for that feature, but it kills memory on a phone because it keeps the sync database in ram when running, while Syncthing relies on files for indexing. So ST is my daily driver, and load up Resilio when I need to grab specific files.
I ended up using a combination of Obsidian sync and Google drive to do what I wanted, and it was much easier.
I'm all for people using Syncthing in cases where it meets their needs, but when you're mainly syncing notes, I think it's overkill and doesn't pull its weight in terms of its learning curve and the potential to screw things up with an incorrect configuration.
Another issue I ran into was that the devices have to be awake at the same time to sync between them. Using a cloud based solution makes that problem go away. Syncthing might be worth it for me if I ever get around to setting up a Linux media server, but I've been resisting it because I don't want another machine to maintain. I still can't help but think of an old job I had where we were almost unable to do a big demo because it relied on a server at a coworker's house that was accidentally unplugged.
Good point about being awake at the same time, and have sync conditions met.
I deal with that by using a computer at home as the always-on cloud.
Definitely something to consider for sync jobs.
Interesting, because my experience with it has been smooth, no problem at all. I let it running on my phone and laptop basically all the time.
re: OneNote
Although not a replacement for OneNote on Windows 10/OneNote in Microsoft 365, you can get Waydroid and run OneNote's Android app with it.
I don't have a stylus so I'm not able to check if everything works, but if it does, it'll hopefully feel better than the web client, which wasn't able to keep up with stylus strokes last time I checked. The number of pens is lacking though, even the iPadOS version is better...
I've always run the full desktop app on Windows (Office 2016 at this point). Pretty sure it supports writing/stylus.
I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop, when MS borks something with Onedrive so I can't sync with this old version any more. Fortunately that will only impact mobile devices, my laptop/pc's will continue to sync with each other.
They're clearly pushing us away from full desktop apps, wanting us to use 365/SaaS instead. No thanks. Web apps/UWP suck.
For using onenote in Linux, I just made an app out of the web version in Epiphany/GNOME Web. It's not as smooth as a real app, but it's functional. I expect you could do it with Chromium too.