I bought a Microsoft product.  I don’t think I’ve ever actually bought a Microsoft product before.  It’s not because I don’t use Microsoft products.  I’ve been using their OS’es for close to two decades.  At work I write my code with Microsoft developer tools, for use in close integration with the Microsoft Office platform.

But, apart from some games, I’ve never personally bought a piece of Microsoft software.  It came with the PC, or my employer paid for it.

The product is OneNote 2010, which is sort of a scratchpad solution, a “note pad” if you will.  I bought it because I use it a lot at work, and I found myself missing it when I was writing at home.

OneNote is a fantastic product.  Actually the whole Office platform is.  I don’t think people quite appreciate what a leap in user-friendliness the Office suite has been through in the 2007 and 2010 versions.  It’s almost so I wish Apple would hire Microsoft’s Office team to rewrite iTunes.  You know, to make using it not remind you of a Kafka novel.  Maybe I’ll e-mail Jobs.  See what he thinks.

But OneNote is the only Office product I would ever use at home.  Word is for Documents, something I sometimes must produce at work.  Nobody outside a business environment ever asked for a Document.  Same with PowerPoint and Excel.

But OneNote: A giant blank piece of paper that is just sitting there, waiting for you to scribble a note or paste some info or start an essay.  Beautiful.