Tag: computers

Microsoft OneNote

I fired up my new copy of Office Enterprise the other day and, even though I’ll never use most of the programs, there is one program (besides Word) that I really like: OneNote.

OneNote is a digital note-taking program.  You can use it for just about anything, from taking notes in class or a meeting to researching travel destinations.  I’m using it to organize my writing research.

I’ve created a notebook for my Egyptian novel.  Within that notebook, I have tabs, such as ‘background info’ and ‘main characters.’  Under each tab, I have a variety of notes.  For example, each character has their own note with their vital statistics.  It’s wonderfully easy to flip between notes and all notes are searchable, so it doesn’t take long to find what you’re looking for.  You can even import handwritten notes from a Tablet PC and it will allegedly translate your chicken scratch into text.  I don’t have a Tablet PC, so I don’t know how well that works.  Seems like it could be a cool feature though.

But that’s not the best part.  OneNote allows you to clip webpages and PDF documents and incorporate them into your notes.  That makes research a lot less time consuming.

With Word and OneNote, I think I have the perfect replacement for Scrivener.

OpenOffice blues

Last week, the free trial of Microsoft Office on my new laptop expired.  I was reluctant to hand over a huge chunk of change to Microsoft for the full version of their product, so I decided to give OpenOffice a try.

This is not the first time I’ve tried OpenOffice.  When I first got my MacBook, I downloaded OpenOffice on the recommendation of the Physicist, who absolutely loves it.  I, on the other hand, was less than impressed.  I found it to be a buggy, unstable piece of crap that had difficulty doing simple tasks such as putting in lists with subpoints.  The only nice thing about it was the ability to save in PDF format.  After several weeks of putting up with its awfulness, I gave in and purchased MS Word for Macs.  And life was good.

But the Physicist assured me that OpenOffice ran better on a PC, so I tried it on my gaming laptop.  I didn’t play around with it much, but, at the very least, it seemed more stable.  When I downloaded OpenOffice last week, I had high hopes that I’d finally have a decent word processor that could replace Word.

I was wrong.  I didn’t have any problems with stability, but the program had discovered new ways to irritate me.  Using the insert comment short cut didn’t actually insert a comment.  Instead, it opened my note software.  OpenOffice is also unable to open the .docx format correctly.  If you try to open a .docx file that has footnotes, it will display them in the middle of the damn page.  Their predictive text feature is worthless (OpenOffice really wants me to name one of my characters ‘Pantyhose’).  Finally, after experiencing the nice layout of Word 2007, OpenOffice’s cheap copy of the Word 2002 interface was just annoying.

In the end, I decided to go with Microsoft Office.  As much as I hate to admit it, they did a really nice job with Office 2007.  Because I ordered it through my university, I’m going to get Office Enterprise, which has a whole bunch of crap I’m never going to use, like Access, Groove, and Communicator.  Oh well.  It’s better to pay less for more rather than paying more for less.

Saying goodbye to my Mac

The other day, I decided that the time had come to purchase a new computer.  I’d been using a MacBook for writing and most day-to-day stuff and a Dell Inspiron for gaming and I was hoping to find a system that could replace them both.  In other words, I was looking for something both portable and powerful.

Being a huge fan of my Mac, I naturally checked out the MacBook Pros first.  I was hoping that they’d finally have decent graphics cards that would allow me to play games but, alas, that’s still not the case.  The more affordable MacBook Pros only come with an integrated graphics card; you have to spend over $2000 before you get a dedicated graphics card and, even then, it didn’t look to be that great.  I’m not going to be playing Crysis or anything like that, but I do enjoy graphically-demanding games such as the Total War series, so I wanted a system that will hold me in good stead for the next few years.

So I began looking at PCs, namely those made by Asus.  I was pleased to discover that they make affordable machines that get very good reviews.  I didn’t like most of their dedicated gaming machines because of the fugly decals and lights they tart them up with.  But I eventually settled on the Asus N61JQ-X1 since it seemed to give me the power I was looking for in a (relatively) portable body.  (At least it’s smaller and lighter than my old Dell!)  I also loved the price.

I am sad to be bidding farewell to my MacBook though.  I still really like OS X and Scrivener is a great program for writers.  But I couldn’t justify spending almost twice as much money for a machine that would be technically inferior to the Asus I ended up buying.  Someday, when I have more money and more space, I might buy a Mac just for writing.  But until then, I’ll just have to muddle through with MS Word.