Microsoft"s OneNote software has been getting more and more popular, especially after it was heavily baked into the Surface and initially made free last year. The OneNote free edition, while it was popular and seen as a step in the right direction, still heard some criticism for not being completely free. That is, some features of the software were still restricted to the paid versions. Fortunately, however, it has recently been announced that the full version of the software will be going free on both the PC and the Mac without any restrictions.
These previously-paid features include:
- Password protected sections: Password protecting the important parts
- Page history: Reverting or viewing historical edits to a page
- Embedding files: Embedding documents and other files directly into OneNote
There is one caveat though: it still doesn"t support direct local storage. Using OneNote for free means you have to use it with OneDrive. While you can still access your files when you are offline, you first have to save to OneDrive and then move it out. Still, not a bad exchange for what you get. Especially considering you can get 100 GB of OneDrive storage for free for two years, if you"re in the US that is.
In a similar note, Apple also made their competing set of productivity tools, iWork, available to Windows users for free yesterday.
OneNote can be downloaded here.