This week, Microsoft reduced the worldwide price of Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 from $199 to $99, significantly enhancing the value of this note-taking and -management application. Earlier, the company had offered customers in the United States and Canada a $100 rebate on the purchase of OneNote, but customers had to pay full price up front, then fill out some paperwork to get the rebate.
"We're going to unify pricing worldwide," Microsoft Group Program Manager Chris Pratley told me. "We had launched OneNote in Japan at the $99 price point but it was $199 elsewhere, with a $100 rebate. As we worked toward OneNote Service Pack 1 \[SP1\], we were looking to see where customers wanted us to go. And we got a good response to the $99 price point." OneNote is still available for $49 to education customers, and businesses that buy 5 or more copies of the product also qualify for discounts.
OneNote SP1, which Microsoft released last week as part of the Office 2003 SP1 release, offers several enhancements over what was already an excellent application. I'll review OneNote 2003 SP1 on the SuperSite for Windows soon.
In related news, Microsoft also recently released two PowerToys for OneNote 2003 SP1 that add interesting functionality. The first, Send to OneNote from Internet Explorer PowerToy, adds a button to the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) toolbar that lets you send any Web page or portion of a Web page to OneNote. The second PowerToy, Send to OneNote from Outlook PowerToy, provides similar functionality for Microsoft Office Outlook-based email messages. The free downloads are available from the URLs below.
OneNote 2003 SP1 Add-in: Send to OneNote from Internet Explorer PowerToy
OneNote 2003 SP1 Add-in: Send to OneNote from Outlook PowerToy
