[Penforhire]

OneNote is Microsoft's secret killer app. So few people realize just how useful and powerful it is. I use it extensively for work but still do not use every feature. For example I don't use it for collaboration (shared on-line OneNote file), I don't record any audio synched to notes, I do not "dock" it next to other Office apps to bookmark between apps, and I do not use their inking tech (which supposedly works well with handwriting-to-text conversion if you use a proper tablet & pen mode).

I use it more for organizing information, searchable history, and related records than for active research. It is way faster to search than Outlook. I sometimes embed e-mails (as icons), sometimes print them onto the OneNote page. Same for web pages (links and/or prints). My metaphor is a multi-subject 3-ring binder with an expandable extra dimension.

One of my odd uses for OneNote is to output PDF's without using a 3rd party PDF print driver. For example, I can screen capture a Google maps view, send it to OneNote, add mark-ups (arrows, text boxes, whatever) and save to PDF from there.

There are OSX and iOS versions of OneNote but they are not fully equivalent, but getting better. I used a 3rd party app on iOS (Outline+) until recently. Microsoft continues to make the effort to improve those platforms (I had a OSX version update just last week).

Microsoft is pressing everyone toward the cloud and their 365 subscription service, which shows most strongly on OSX and iOS. I still use a local OneNote file only under Windows. Having the file maintained in their cloud is not terrible but I still resist it on principle.