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evernote can actually work offline. Time to reconsider it, as it's damn powerful
Dormouse:
However, from what you say, I'm not sure that it is yet free of what I saw as the single greatest drawback to using it - namely, proprietary "lock-in" of your data to, and your dependence on, an offline service which you cannot control. -IainB (August 28, 2011, 06:42 PM)
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The data can be exported as one large or many separate notes. xml, mht or html.
And there's no dependence on the service any more than there is with any program resident on your computer.
Dormouse:
OneNote + Outlook + Jello Dashboard-IainB (August 28, 2011, 06:42 PM)
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I also use OneNote. I find it's useful for a completely different range of things than Evernote, but is also fairly ponderous and limited in many ways. I tend to use it only for research into complex areas. Its value is increased if you spend a lot of time working with its Office colleagues (I avoid Outlook like the plague wherever I can, and only use Word when necessary to edit or review other people's documents).
I have used Jello Dashboard in the past and it does make Outlook a little more tolerable. But I just didn't find it nice enough or good enough to make me want to use Outlook.
IainB:
Just to respond to some points from the thread above:
:up:
Could you ellaborate on how to use Windows Live Sky Drive with onenote and multiple comps?
I abandoned onenote partly because of the vendor lockin. Your onenote files are incredibly locked down. with EN we are in a similar situation, but it's mostly html, so export is easier.
-urlwolf (August 28, 2011, 08:41 PM)
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OneNote collaboration + Windows Sky Drive:
* For example/help refer OneNote Web App in Windows Live
* Also useful info. if you google something like windows Live OneNote
Lock-in:
There seem to be two main parts to typical lock-in in this case:
(a) lock-in to a proprietary format for your data (so it cannot be accessed easily by/for other applications).
The LCD (lowest common denominator) for data format, for automated migration of data out of the applications:
* EN - is per @urlwolf's comment above; not sure how you could migrate all/any image text data though.
* ON - XPS or PDF format (ON is just a collection of documented data, with embedded images; if you have used the ON OCR to capture all/any image text data, then that can be migrated too).
(b) lock-in to a solution approach:
* EN wants to lock you in to a paid-for online solution, so it pushes you in that direction, and only provides a crippled client application- i.e., with reduced functionality - for offline use;
* MS wants to lock you into their MS Office tools, but cannot, because ON is self-contained as a standalone product. So, the new ON 2010 functionality forces you into an upgrade in order to use the latest, integrated cloud solution and MS Office package.
After migration of data, I would suggest using a good reference management tool (e.g., I would probably use the brilliant Qiqqa) to access, index and use any migrated PDF output. I'm unsure what to do with XPS output, so I might avoid using that.
:up:
I think you read too much into EN's "OCR" feature. It is not OCR in the traditional sense, although what it does is probably even better for its intended purpose.
EN uses OCR only for searching, as opposed to turning an image into a canonical textual representation. It appears that this means that it can be far more liberal with its interpretation of the image, allowing for search hits on all likely solutions.
Imagine that based on the image, the OCR software can't decide whether the text is "them" or "thern". With EN, it'll match both (or such is my understanding), ensuring that a search will almost never miss its target -- although it may come up with false positives.
But the cost of this is that there may, internally, be multiple textual representations, so it's not possible to take the next step and extract the actual text.
-CWuestefeld (August 29, 2011, 11:47 AM)
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I presume that ON does the same as EN in making flexible text-searches of text in images, because it seems to be equally accurate. However, if you extract the OCR'd text from an image in ON, you get the usual sorts of errors. I still do that anyway (extract the OCR'd text) and then clean it up manually.
This might seem excessive to some people, but I am paranoid anyway, though more importantly I have a solid rationale for this. The rationale is that the object is only worth capturing in the first place because it contains text, so then the text has inherent value, so adding value to it by data editing/correction is cost-justifiable. This is a theoretical approach that I learned during a project I worked on in Thailand years ago, which resulted in capturing 20 million hardcopy land/property deeds as images, with the image - and the printed and handwritten text thereon - becoming the primary document. You couldn't afford to make any mistakes, and there was "no going back".
:up:
I also use OneNote. I find it's useful for a completely different range of things than Evernote, but is also fairly ponderous and limited in many ways. I tend to use it only for research into complex areas. Its value is increased if you spend a lot of time working with its Office colleagues (I avoid Outlook like the plague wherever I can, and only use Word when necessary to edit or review other people's documents).
I have used Jello Dashboard in the past and it does make Outlook a little more tolerable. But I just didn't find it nice enough or good enough to make me want to use Outlook.
-Dormouse (August 29, 2011, 03:34 PM)
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Yes, I tend to agree with most of what you say here, though I have not yet concluded the trial of Outlook+Jello, so I may yet change my mind, though I reserve the right not to change it.
"When given the choice between changing one's mind or proving one's point of view, most people get busy on the proof." (JK Galbraith) ;)
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