OneNote Showcases Tablet PCs Tighter Integration With Office

Microsoft Corp.s Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 features tighter integration with Microsoft applications, and nowhere is this more apparent than when using Microsoft Office OneNote 2003.

Click here to read eWEEK Labs review of Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005.

Microsoft plans to introduce OneNote Service Pack 1 shortly after the release of Microsoft Office 2003 SP1, expected this summer. eWEEK Labs reviewed a preview release of OneNote 2003 SP1, which is available for download at www.microsoft.com/office/onenote/sp1.

OneNote 2003, which won an eWEEK Excellence Award in the Personal Productivity category this year, combines the familiarity of handwriting with the efficacy of digital media. The application, which must be purchased separately from Microsoft Office (for $199), allows users to capture, organize and share notes on computers.

eWEEK Labs installed the OneNote SP1 preview on an M275 Tablet PC from Gateway Inc. after loading the Office 2003 suite.

OneNote automatically recognized our hardware as a Tablet PC and let us highlight text and objects using the tablets pen.

When used with Tablet PCs whose styluses have eraser functionality, the OneNote update lets users erase handwritten notes as they would with a traditional pencil eraser on paper.

In tests, we could insert documents from Office applications such as PowerPoint, Word and Excel into OneNote as pictures. After inserting a Word 2003 document into a OneNote page, for example, we could annotate the document with handwritten notes using our Tablet PCs stylus. We also were able to type notes on the Word document in OneNote.

Audio and written notes taken using a Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC or smart phone can now be automatically copied into OneNote. Users also can create notes using video from Web cameras and capture screen images into OneNote, along with time and date stamps.

Most useful to enterprise users is the ability to post notes on a site powered by Microsofts SharePoint Portal Server 2.0 or Windows SharePoint Services using the Shared Workspace Pane in OneNote.

Enterprise users also will appreciate the security features added to the update: We were able to password-protect notes, as well as encrypt notes and parts of notes—a handy feature when sharing documents with other users.

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