If you have a Mac... Forum

[rocketman]

...all the OneNote alternatives that have been suggested to me (Circus Ponies etc.) are garbage.

Would the best route be to just download bootcamp and then run ms office through windows on your mac or is there a recently developed method I don't know about?

Also, is bootcamp freeware?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Is there a way to load OneNote without loading up Windows on there?

[CyLaw]

...all the OneNote alternatives that have been suggested to me (Circus Ponies etc.) are garbage.

Would the best route be to just download bootcamp and then run ms office through windows on your mac or is there a recently developed method I don't know about?

Also, is bootcamp freeware?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Is there a way to load OneNote without loading up Windows on there?

1. The best compromise for an application as simple and non-resource intensive as MS Office is to use some type of virtualization. Parallels and VMWare Fusion are the most common, and fairly inexpensive for their academic licenses. Sun's VirtualBox also works great and is free. All these will require you to also purchase or obtain a windows license.

2. Boot camp is free. If you have OS X 10.6 then it is built in already. If you are still running 10.5, then I think you have to download something from apple, but it is still free.

3. Yes, CrossOver allows you to run windows programs without needing ones, and it works well with OneNote 2007. OneNote 2010 is listed as known not to work with CrossOver.

[rocketman]

...all the OneNote alternatives that have been suggested to me (Circus Ponies etc.) are garbage.

Would the best route be to just download bootcamp and then run ms office through windows on your mac or is there a recently developed method I don't know about?

Also, is bootcamp freeware?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Is there a way to load OneNote without loading up Windows on there?

1. The best compromise for an application as simple and non-resource intensive as MS Office is to use some type of virtualization. Parallels and VMWare Fusion are the most common, and fairly inexpensive for their academic licenses. Sun's VirtualBox also works great and is free. All these will require you to also purchase or obtain a windows license.

2. Boot camp is free. If you have OS X 10.6 then it is built in already. If you are still running 10.5, then I think you have to download something from apple, but it is still free.

3. Yes, CrossOver allows you to run windows programs without needing ones, and it works well with OneNote 2007. OneNote 2010 is listed as known not to work with CrossOver.

thanks. to be more specific, what I mean is that my understanding was, to run onenote, I would need to load up Windows in a window, and then load up onenote. What I want to know is whether there is a way to just load up onenote directly, bypassing the step of loading up Windows.

[CyLaw]

...all the OneNote alternatives that have been suggested to me (Circus Ponies etc.) are garbage.

Would the best route be to just download bootcamp and then run ms office through windows on your mac or is there a recently developed method I don't know about?

Also, is bootcamp freeware?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Is there a way to load OneNote without loading up Windows on there?

1. The best compromise for an application as simple and non-resource intensive as MS Office is to use some type of virtualization. Parallels and VMWare Fusion are the most common, and fairly inexpensive for their academic licenses. Sun's VirtualBox also works great and is free. All these will require you to also purchase or obtain a windows license.

2. Boot camp is free. If you have OS X 10.6 then it is built in already. If you are still running 10.5, then I think you have to download something from apple, but it is still free.

3. Yes, CrossOver allows you to run windows programs without needing ones, and it works well with OneNote 2007. OneNote 2010 is listed as known not to work with CrossOver.

thanks. to be more specific, what I mean is that my understanding was, to run onenote, I would need to load up Windows in a window, and then load up onenote. What I want to know is whether there is a way to just load up onenote directly, bypassing the step of loading up Windows.

That is what CrossOver does. Sorry if I was not clear on that.

[rocketman]

...all the OneNote alternatives that have been suggested to me (Circus Ponies etc.) are garbage.

Would the best route be to just download bootcamp and then run ms office through windows on your mac or is there a recently developed method I don't know about?

Also, is bootcamp freeware?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Is there a way to load OneNote without loading up Windows on there?

1. The best compromise for an application as simple and non-resource intensive as MS Office is to use some type of virtualization. Parallels and VMWare Fusion are the most common, and fairly inexpensive for their academic licenses. Sun's VirtualBox also works great and is free. All these will require you to also purchase or obtain a windows license.

2. Boot camp is free. If you have OS X 10.6 then it is built in already. If you are still running 10.5, then I think you have to download something from apple, but it is still free.

3. Yes, CrossOver allows you to run windows programs without needing ones, and it works well with OneNote 2007. OneNote 2010 is listed as known not to work with CrossOver.

thanks. to be more specific, what I mean is that my understanding was, to run onenote, I would need to load up Windows in a window, and then load up onenote. What I want to know is whether there is a way to just load up onenote directly, bypassing the step of loading up Windows.

That is what CrossOver does. Sorry if I was not clear on that.

Thanks. So I don't need to purchase Windows I take it - just crossover and office. Where can I order office 2007 now that 2010 has been released?

[03121202698008]

...all the OneNote alternatives that have been suggested to me (Circus Ponies etc.) are garbage.

Would the best route be to just download bootcamp and then run ms office through windows on your mac or is there a recently developed method I don't know about?

Also, is bootcamp freeware?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Is there a way to load OneNote without loading up Windows on there?

1. The best compromise for an application as simple and non-resource intensive as MS Office is to use some type of virtualization. Parallels and VMWare Fusion are the most common, and fairly inexpensive for their academic licenses. Sun's VirtualBox also works great and is free. All these will require you to also purchase or obtain a windows license.

2. Boot camp is free. If you have OS X 10.6 then it is built in already. If you are still running 10.5, then I think you have to download something from apple, but it is still free.

3. Yes, CrossOver allows you to run windows programs without needing ones, and it works well with OneNote 2007. OneNote 2010 is listed as known not to work with CrossOver.

What version of Crossover are you using? When I tried it onenote crashed when I did anything other than type. Crossover's App compatibility database also reflects these problems.

[03121202698008]

OP, what didn't you like about circusponies? I found it to be very similar in use to onenote.

[CyLaw]

...all the OneNote alternatives that have been suggested to me (Circus Ponies etc.) are garbage.

Would the best route be to just download bootcamp and then run ms office through windows on your mac or is there a recently developed method I don't know about?

Also, is bootcamp freeware?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Is there a way to load OneNote without loading up Windows on there?

1. The best compromise for an application as simple and non-resource intensive as MS Office is to use some type of virtualization. Parallels and VMWare Fusion are the most common, and fairly inexpensive for their academic licenses. Sun's VirtualBox also works great and is free. All these will require you to also purchase or obtain a windows license.

2. Boot camp is free. If you have OS X 10.6 then it is built in already. If you are still running 10.5, then I think you have to download something from apple, but it is still free.

3. Yes, CrossOver allows you to run windows programs without needing ones, and it works well with OneNote 2007. OneNote 2010 is listed as known not to work with CrossOver.

What version of Crossover are you using? When I tried it onenote crashed when I did anything other than type. Crossover's App compatibility database also reflects these problems.

I will have to talk to the wife. She uses crossover for her lab notebook in OneNote since she has to share it with other people. I use circus ponies' notebook for all my notetaking.

[TTH]

OP, what didn't you like about circusponies? I found it to be very similar in use to onenote.

Relevant to my interests. I've really liked Circus Ponies so far. What am I missing?

[Duralex]

I've received a few PMs on this. I'll try to post a list of the OS X software I've found most academically useful sometime soon (I'm running around like crazy this week) but in the mean time my suggestion is to check out DevonThink Pro Office.

http://www.devon-technologies.com/produ ... index.html

Merlin Mann (of 43folders and other sites) on DT:

http://www.43folders.com/2006/05/22/dt-smart-groups

Other popular apps: CircusPonies Notebook as mentioned, OmniOutliner (and the other Omni apps -- I *love* OmniFocus). Evernote, if you want a cross platform cloud-based note system. You can put Evernote on all of your computers and phones and get to your stuff anywhere--that appeals to a lot of people. I use it as a data dump but pull academic material out of EN and into DTPO.

Quicksilver, if you've never heard of it, is something that makes all Macs better. Do more with 3 or 4 keystrokes than you've ever imagined: http://www.blacktree.com/

TextExpander is awesome--you can define abbreviations that auto-expand while typing. I tend to use typographical elements (typically ~ and ` since English doesn't need them) to give me more control over when TE kicks in. For instance soc`lgy would expand to sociology. t`fzr to tortfeasor would be an obvious example for LS. Just make sure you know how to spell things for exams.

a description of an academic workflow that's pretty close to what I was doing by the end of UG and similar to how I plan to approach LS:

--LinkRemoved--

A few notes on that last article:

--ref managers appear to be bordering on academic dishonesty if you use them to programmatically generate correct bluebook cites for LRW assignments or law review contests etc, so probably best to avoid them until after 1L (and afterwards in any drafting classes?) The LRW prof I asked about this had no idea Zotero, EndNote, BibDesk etc existed and was not amused. Law schools are going to have to catch up to the 21st century on this at some point, but apparently not yet.

--I keep my PDFs in DTPO, not Sente or Papers or a similar dedicated reference manager/PDF library. DTPO will index PDFs stored outside of its database, but I prefer not to deal with that when I don't have to (since I don't really need the reference manager functions most of the time.)

--be careful about using Skim--only Skim understands Skim's note/annotation layer. While it works better than the standard PDF tools, you are putting yourself in something of a walled garden if you rely on it.

--Mellel, which gets a mention, is an awesome word processor but has a learning curve and is not for everyone.

Scrivener, also mentioned in that workflow, is very cool and helpful for academic and legal writing (I've used it for both.) I wouldn't use it for note-taking over something like DevonThink, Omni or CircusPonies though.

[CyLaw]

I've received a few PMs on this. I'll try to post a list of the OS X software I've found most academically useful sometime soon (I'm running around like crazy this week) but in the mean time my suggestion is to check out DevonThink Pro Office.

http://www.devon-technologies.com/produ ... index.html

Merlin Mann (of 43folders and other sites) on DT:

http://www.43folders.com/2006/05/22/dt-smart-groups

I just started using DEVONthink to manage all my documents, and really like it. Now, If I can only find a scanner I like to use with it.

[miamiman]

Just a quick post on this topic. I bought Parallels and OneNote 2010. I have a brand new i7 MacBook Pro. I can tell you that OneNote doesn't run nearly as seamlessly as you'd like and that it's far slower than simply running Word 2008 on it's notebook view. I'm not entirely sure which way I will swing but a lot of the most sought after functions on OneNote are available in Word. Just Fyi.

[03121202698008]

Just a quick post on this topic. I bought Parallels and OneNote 2010. I have a brand new i7 MacBook Pro. I can tell you that OneNote doesn't run nearly as seamlessly as you'd like and that it's far slower than simply running Word 2008 on it's notebook view. I'm not entirely sure which way I will swing but a lot of the most sought after functions on OneNote are available in Word. Just Fyi.

Do you have the correct drivers loaded in Windows? With Parallels you are running windows natively so should be getting the same performance as any other PC. Are you saying these issues are present in OneNote 2010 regardless of the system?

[Duralex]

Well--you're not running it natively unless you boot into Windows. It's a hypervisor. How much RAM does the system in question have? Note also that as of 2009, Parallels could only expose one core to the guest OS. Performance is not going to equal Windows w/that restriction in place.

[miamiman]

Just a quick post on this topic. I bought Parallels and OneNote 2010. I have a brand new i7 MacBook Pro. I can tell you that OneNote doesn't run nearly as seamlessly as you'd like and that it's far slower than simply running Word 2008 on it's notebook view. I'm not entirely sure which way I will swing but a lot of the most sought after functions on OneNote are available in Word. Just Fyi.

Do you have the correct drivers loaded in Windows? With Parallels you are running windows natively so should be getting the same performance as any other PC. Are you saying these issues are present in OneNote 2010 regardless of the system?

It runs OK but not as fast as running things natively on the Mac. Additionally, you'll find a few glitches that Parallels even acknowledges like an occasional twitch that triggers the windows button (that you can't shut off).

[03121202698008]

Just a quick post on this topic. I bought Parallels and OneNote 2010. I have a brand new i7 MacBook Pro. I can tell you that OneNote doesn't run nearly as seamlessly as you'd like and that it's far slower than simply running Word 2008 on it's notebook view. I'm not entirely sure which way I will swing but a lot of the most sought after functions on OneNote are available in Word. Just Fyi.

Do you have the correct drivers loaded in Windows? With Parallels you are running windows natively so should be getting the same performance as any other PC. Are you saying these issues are present in OneNote 2010 regardless of the system?

It runs OK but not as fast as running things natively on the Mac. Additionally, you'll find a few glitches that Parallels even acknowledges like an occasional twitch that triggers the windows button (that you can't shut off).

Bah, still asleep. Thinking of Bootcamp. I use vmware...you are correct that OneNote has issues in hypervisors.

[Duralex]

a few glitches that Parallels even acknowledges like an occasional twitch that triggers the windows button (that you can't shut off).

If you're talking about the start menu, you can disable the windows keystroke activation of the menu in the registry. If the twitch is coming from spurious keypresses, that should kill it. (Or course, you'll have to click the start menu after that.)

http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/d ... ndows_key/

[03121202698008]

a few glitches that Parallels even acknowledges like an occasional twitch that triggers the windows button (that you can't shut off).

If you're talking about the start menu, you can disable the windows keystroke activation of the menu in the registry. If the twitch is coming from spurious keypresses, that should kill it. (Or course, you'll have to click the start menu after that.)

http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/d ... ndows_key/

I don't have that glitch in vmware...

Vmware also will push multi-cores to the guest.

[Duralex]

Yeah. I prefer VMware too, although about a year and a half ago Parallels pummeled it in performance testing (multicore performance was excluded, I suppose.) The Fusion team did a big mea culpa blog post about it, pointing to VMware being more 'featureful,' and then promised to do better. I think there was a significant update recently, so hopefully they have.

[badwithpseudonyms]

Just a quick post on this topic. I bought Parallels and OneNote 2010. I have a brand new i7 MacBook Pro. I can tell you that OneNote doesn't run nearly as seamlessly as you'd like and that it's far slower than simply running Word 2008 on it's notebook view. I'm not entirely sure which way I will swing but a lot of the most sought after functions on OneNote are available in Word. Just Fyi.

I'm being lazy; could you fill me in on which OneNote features are available in Word 2010?

[ResolutePear]

I'll just be as blunt as I can with this:

If you needed oneNote - the mac was a horrible choice. But, there's no use in crying over spilled milk.

Check out EverNote. It's the end all, be all of note taking since I can take notes with almost anything(laptop, computer, phone, tablet, etc.) and sync it all together.

[03121202698008]

I'll just be as blunt as I can with this:

If you needed oneNote - the mac was a horrible choice. But, there's no use in crying over spilled milk.

Check out EverNote. It's the end all, be all of note taking since I can take notes with almost anything(laptop, computer, phone, tablet, etc.) and sync it all together.

Evernote is pretty nice but taking notes in it is like taking them in Word. If you are a click anywhere and write kind of note taker it's not going to work well.

Circusponies is miles closer to OneNote than EverNote is.

[Duralex]

Here are promotional materials for the products in question, for people who would like to compare.

CircusPonies NoteBook Features
CircusPonies Notebook Video Tour

DevonThink Overview
DevonThink 2.0 New Features
What Makes DT Unique? (LinkRemoved)

OmniOutliner Overview
OmniOutliner Features
OmniOutliner Videos

OmniFocus Overview
OmniFocus Features

For mindmapping and flowcharting: OmniGraffle.

Scrivener Overview
Scrivener Videos (LinkRemoved) (these really get the point across well)

Skim is the Open Source PDF reader that has created it's own add-on annotation and highlighting layer much better than the standard Adobe or PDFkit that lives in a separate .skim file. (So if you open the PDF in Acrobat or Preview or something that doesn't now about .skim files you don't see the annotation--but the API is open and other developers have been slowly adding support. DevonThink, for instance, apparently now has some basic support for it--although it displays the .skim notes separately unless you fire up the external viewer. )

Evernote videos (LinkRemoved)
and for those who aren't thrilled with Evernote features (or pricing), but want something similar, you might like Springpad.
Springpad Features (LinkRemoved)

If you want a lighter version of something like Springpad/Evernote you may want to look at Simplenote. This is especially good if you just want to use it as an input sink/data dump for stuff you're going to put into another app.

Papers: your personal research library -- this is really more for science and medicine, etc, but is often mentioned in discussion of academic software and PDF management so I'm linking it.

Not yet mentioned, but worth looking at are the "everything organizers":
Yojimbo(from BareBones Software, makers of the famous BBEdit) -- "effortless, reliable information organizer for Mac OS X"
Bento (from FileMaker -- which I suppose must be the remnants of Claris).

I don't want to get into the reference/citation managers unless there's an interest as it seems they are not used in LS.

Personal wikis were also mentioned, which is a great idea, but discussion belongs in a cross-platform thread where others can make benefit glorious legal education.

This random blog entry from a tech lawyer I googled up mentions a lot of these, some might enjoy his perspective:
--LinkRemoved--

I'll quote what he says about my two favored apps:

2. DEVONthink Pro
I love DEVONthink Pro. This is the sort of software that can single-handedly draw Windows users over to the Mac. DEVONthink is many things to many people. For me, it is a powerful database/notes application with built-in keyword artificial intelligence that allows me to more quickly store and find information. I use it for two primary purposes: (1) I scan all of my personal paperwork, files, mail, etc. into a “scanned files” database using DEVONthink’s OCR feature and (2) I collect notes, articles, and other research in several career-related databases. For example, I have an intellectual property law database for cases, articles, and legal research. And I have a technology news database for tracking developments in the technology industry. The software offers some handy web clipping bookmarklets to aid your workflow.

When you’ve created a database and moved information into folders, that’s where DEVONthink’s artificial intelligence—its killer feature—kicks in. Not only can you quickly search your information but you can ask DEVONthink to suggest related notes and articles, and folders for filing related notes and articles; based on keyword analysis, it can accurately suggest related information. The new web clips bookmarlet feature, combined with the universal inbox takes DEVONthink to a new level of usefulness.

3. Scrivener
It’s not an overstatement to say that this is the future of writing. For any writing project that is long enough to require sections and an outline, you really should be using Scrivener. It lets you focus on the organization and the writing without getting bogged down in managing all the pieces. You can easily brainstorm with virtual index cards on a cork board and translate that directly into an outline. You can annotate your text and easily rearrange. When you’re ready to move to the editing and proof reading stage, you can export to the word processor of your choice. I used this to write a legal research article and it substantially reduced the time I spent getting to a first draft.

DevonThink can trigger the 'See Also' and 'Lookup' functions from highlighted text. So you can highlight a key rule element or holding phraseology and make the AI crawl through your whole database (which would ideally contain your notes, outlines and PDFs of all assigned cases and note cases, maybe even digitized supplements) to dredge up associations and connections--and then rank them by relevance. It's really pretty awesome. In UG and now at the office, as I worked I would dump any relevant or even interesting articles/cases I pulled as I researched into DT and after a while I could often find what I need for issues I was returning to within my own DB rather than needing to trawl jstor or Westlaw again.

And perhaps most powerfully, it can alert you to connections or overlap that you may not have perceived yet.