Microsoft has spent a fortune (at least what I would call a fortune) advertising its OneNote application through various online channels – I’m sure you’ve seen the ads here and there (and if you haven’t, here’s one! —> )

Anyways, roughly two months ago, I bought a new toy to help me around the office, in meetings and when I’m on the road. The device, called a Mobile Notetaker, uses a combination of ultrasonics and radio frequencies to track the movement of a special pen on a regular pad of paper, and digitize them for storage on my computer – all in real-time.

The major benefit of using this approach instead of taking a laptop into a meeting is one of portability and sociabilty. I can stick the Notetaker in my shirt pocket, an executive brief, etc. Makes life much easier in terms of the amount and weight of stuff I have to carry around. It also means that I’m one of the few people not hiding behind an LCD screen. I’ve found that it makes me more “approachable” in meetings as well. People like talking to people, not the backside of a Thinkpad.

Now I know you’re thinking “So what - a regular pad of paper does the same thing.” The problem with a regular pad of paper is that you can’t store it on your hard drive and have it your fingertips six months later when you are sitting in airport lounge in Wellington, New Zealand. By going digital, it means that *all* of my notes are always handy and not stuffed in a file folder somewhere.

Very cool stuff.

(Sidebar: I haven’t been hands-on with an Origami device yet, but I’m really hoping that I can find one that gives me enough functionality so that I can converge my Notetaker with my PDAPhone. Based on preliminary reports, I’m not holding my breath, but I haven’t given up hope yet. All I want is better functionality than my XDA IIs can give me, without the price tag of a full-blown tablet – I’m not trading in my Thinkpad anytime soon, so all I really need is a functional subset of the features that a real tablet can give me.)

Now back to OneNote. OneNote is compatible with the NoteTaker and nimbly stores everything I write in its promising (but underperforming) filing system that was specially designed for handwriting users on the Microsoft Tablet platform. Much room for improvement, but certainly worth the price they are asking.

What’s interesting about Microsoft’s marketing approach with OneNote is that its a classic shareware marketing program (a subject with which me and my Tucows brethren have more than a passing association with). Download it for free, try it out for a while, and if you like it, buy it. If it doesn’t do what you need it to do, don’t pay for it and the software will lock itself up and stop working after a period of time. My trial period runs out next week. I’ve certainly received good value from OneNote, and I’m hopeful that they’ll fix my pet bugs in the next release. There are no serious show-stoppers in the package as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not really hesitating to ante up and register the software.

I’m travelling next week, so I wanted to get the software registration out of the way before I left Toronto. Nothing worse than having system problems while you are on the road. In clicking the “Buy Key Online” button in OneNote itself, I was taken to a website where I can buy a registration key.

This was the response I got from their server:

*sigh*

Why does it have to be so hard to spend money sometimes? They’ve invested heavily in developing this product, they’ve invested heavily in marketing it – I think they need to invest a little bit more in ENSURING THAT I CAN PAY THEM!

I just tried again, same error. Now I’m stuck. I’m leaving town very soon, and my notes will be locked away in Microsoft’s Unregistered OneNote Hell. Agh.

What really kills me is that if I had these sorts of problems in the real world, the merchant would probably cut me a break on the price because of the problems I had – or at least toss me a kind word and apologize profusely while he took extra care wrapping my purchase.

Somehow I suspect that I’m not going to get any such consideration from Microsoft.