Law School and 2007 OneNote?

[TheAmericanModerate]

Hey everyone,

I am about to start law school. I was impressed with 2003 (I was
playing around with it a bit to see if I could use it to replace
OpenOffice Writer). I installed the 2007 beta version and I like it
more than 2003. Here are my questions.

1) Is OneNote good for law school?

2) Is 2007 stable enough to handle such important work?

3) I read in the group that OneNote couldn't handle large files (say
for lots of pages of notes), is this true?

4) If I backup the "My Notebook" section, will this be sufficient to
recover in case of loss?

Thank you

 

[Patrick Schmid]

1) I don't know if ON is good for law school. I use it for my PhD work
in Computer Science.
2) Official answer: nope. Beta versions should never be used for
production work. My personal opinion? If you can handle crashes, minor
and major annoyances and potentially data loss, then go for it. If you
want a well-working product that is as stable as OneNote 2003, then use
OneNote 2003.
3) Nope. Not true (at least for 2007). Embedded files (external files on
your notes pages) pose problems in ON 2007 Beta 2, so I would caution
you to avoid those. However, OneNote note pages themselves should only
be limited by your disk space. Keep in mind that on the computer where
you have the OneNote Notebook files, you'll need twice the disk space of
that folder (OneNote Notebooks folder plus cached copy).
4) No. My Notebook is OneNote 2003. You need to backup OneNote
Notebooks. I'd backup regularly. Myself, I backup every night.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Amos Soma]

1) I suspect it is because I've read many posts from students using ON.

2) Officially: No. However, I have been using ON 2007 Beta 2 for almost two
months now and I've had two crashes I think and no loss of data. I use it
very heavily for work activities for personal studies where I have years of
research stored. I backup EVERY DAY to a USB memory stick and to an internet
based backup service.

3) Not true for me. I have some VERY large pages containing tables, and
notebooks containing dozens of sections.

4) If you have a backup that is off your computer, that should be
sufficient.

Amos.

 

[Andrew Watt [MVP]]

1. Yes. Over the last 3 years there have been lots of questions from
people using OneNote 2003 for legal work.

2. Yes in my view. The one thing you should check is that there is an
upgrade path from OneNote 2007 Beta 2 to OneNote RTM. I assume there
is. Patrick is more active in the beta than I am so will probably know
about that.

3. OneNote 2003 will handle really large files. BUT before you start
plan how you want to divide up your notes. How you do that differs
between OneNote 2003 and OneNote 2007.

4. Depends on what types of loss you want to cover. If you backup to a
hard disk and the computer is stolen the answer is No. If you backup
to a memory stick and keep the stick with the computer in a room that
burns down the answer is No. Decide what risks you want to cover. If
you are using OneNote to store your academic "life" then make sure
that you backup (maybe weekly?) to some off-site store. At least
that's what I would do if the data were crucial to my academic
progress.

Andrew Watt MVP

 

[Patrick Schmid]

2. Notes entered in beta 2 will be upgradeable to RTM. Upgrade in this
context can mean btw to uninstall B2 and install the next beta release
(b2tr) or rtm. Removing & installing a new build doesn't affect
notebooks and maybe only a few settings. It was the only way I could go
from Beta 1 to Beta 1 Technical Refresh and then to Beta 2. It works.
4. I backup my notes nightly to an Internet server.

Patrick Schmid