From your flashes of inspiration at 2:00 AM to the list of funny things your children say, or that brilliant idea you had in the conference room, and your ever-growing list of household chores — OneN...
Updated Feb 10, 2023
Version 6.0
Blog Post
I have to say that regardless of the hard-fought effort to restore OneNote 2016 to active status, my faith in Office was irreparibly broken. I've transitioned almost all of my OneNote activity to Evernote. Why?
I expect OneNote will suffer from the same systemitized lobotomies that the smaller Office groups historically have suffered on a regular basis. Let me explain that using OneNote as a speicific example. OneNote is not a bread-and-butter app for MSFT/Office. Employees tasked with the current product will transition over time to other teams, and other companies, and the corporate memory of how and why this app works as it does will degrade and become lost. Eventually someone will point at OneNote again and say "how does this fit into our long-term strategy" or "what are our actual usage numbers for this app (as opposed to Word/Excel/PowerPoint) and how do we justify continuing to maintain it?"
This happens on a regular basis, and if challenged I can give you many historical examples.
So I'd rather trust my personal note data to a company that lives-or-dies by persisting functionality and security. For a company like Evernote, their app is their sole reason for being, and syncronization and offline local storage are not likely to come into doubt any time in the future. They're fully cross platform (even LINUX has 3rd party strategies.) I'm still a MSFT Office fan, but I'm a fan who knows where to put my faith in that suite.
Full disclosure: I have no personal or financial interest in Evernote aside from being a subscriber to their service. On the other hand, I own MSFT stock, subscribe to multiple Office memberships, and am a paid-up member of the MSFT Alumni organization.