I am intriqued by the MS Product OneNote 2007. What I like about the product is the integration of information and hyperlinks into notebooks that can be used to easily organize information or create templates to be used to maintain a business. One of the problems that I have had is finding information no matter how well it is stored on my hard drive or where it is located online. It is very usefull, for example, to have a notebook devoted to my structural engineering business – from a page that provides links to start software used for analysis, a section where I can drag and drop a spreadsheet used to maintain job numbers, Indexes that launch PDF files for buiding codes or for proprietary building materials. Most of this can be done through individual tools that must be launched separately such as Adobe Acrobat’s file cabinet. But it would be much more productive to have one notebook that contains links to the PDF codes and building materials, as well as to launch cad and analysis tools, flip a page to find an invoice or contract – to integrate the many features of numerous programs into one custom package.
Vista does a good job searching for information and programs to launch, but One Note lets you organize almost anything into notebooks. The downside is that it is a $100.00 product. I don’t mean to complain about paying for software, but it seems that lately the “gimmick” is to sell subscriptions to keep the cash flow growing for companies who have saturated a market or have fewer new subscribers than when their product was first introduced to a profession. Each year I am hit with a number of costly subscriptions to maintain and while I do this to earn a living, I also create tools in spreadsheet formats (some very complicated tools that design to building codes) and I place these tools into public domain. I do this because I have the ability that many engineers do not have and because I already know that it is not as profitable as I once thought to sell software. Furthermore, it is important for small practices to stay in business and many are feeling the squeeze. If you can not afford the software then you should have the choice to contribute software to your profession and receive the ability to use or develop other software similar to the Open Office idea. In addition I had this idea at one time that I could create an “Evolutionary” software – a spreadsheet, for example, that others can improve upon and donate back into public domain. The goal is to create a public domain software and use the creativity of others to keep improving the software – again, very similar to what I believe is the Open Office idea. One Note is the first of such a product that I would like to see developed. I would also like to see compatibility with software that relies upon MS Word as a platform to work within. TEDDS Engineering Software is one such software that must use Word 2003 or Word 2007 as an operating platform. Why shouldn’t Open Office offer the same compatibility? I hope you see my point. I can contribute spreadsheets to engineers and would like some reciprocation in tools that would benefit me. I am willing to do what I can through Open Office to help bring this about. LQEngineer No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.9.14/880 - Release Date: 6/29/2007 2:15 PM
