App of the Week - OneNote MX Preview for Windows 8
If you haven’t already, you will start university in just a few weeks (sorry summer is soon over ;-). You will have new courses, new professors, new text books, new schedules... wow… a lot of things to keep track of! That is why this app of the week is all about helping you keep organised.
OneNote has been around for some time now as a regular Desktop app. It allows you to organise notes and information easily in digital notebooks. Everything from Excel spreadsheets to contacts and pictures can be stored and searched. Versions for the browser, Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad and Android have also showed up in respective stores to make note taking and reading easier on the go. It was now time for Windows 8 to get its own, namely OneNote MX.
When you open OneNote MX for the first time after downloading it from the store it will get all the notebooks you already have linked to your Microsoft account. You can then create new notebooks, sections or pages and they will sync nicely to all your other computers and devices. No surprise there (right? ;-).
You will quickly notice that this app really is optimized for touch screens. The buttons are large and the left side pane reacts to swipe movements to hide and show the notebook list. Instead of a regular toolbar that would clutter the screen, this application has shortcut menu that pops out when you press the screen. From there you can easily add bullets points, tags, etc. I find it very ingenious.
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| Default menu | Font menu | Edit font size |
Now what about the most important part: note taking? If you are on a device where you can use a stylus, you can just go ahead and write on the screen. You can also of course use a regular or the onscreen keyboard.
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Since it is still only a Preview version, some features are missing. Sharing for example is not supported yet. But it has all the good ingredients to make a really great app!
To run this app you will need Windows 8. You can download it now from your school’s Dreamspark Premium (formerly MSDN-AA) portal NOW and FOR FREE!
If you want more tips on how to organize your life with OneNote check out the student portal.
Pierre
Lead Student Partner
Region Lausanne
The App of the Week blog category is an initiative of your local Microsoft Student Partners in Switzerland. Feel free to contact us, send us your proposals for an App of the Week or drop some lines below if you want to share ideas, feedback or just want to comment.