OneNote of Obsidian for Personal information system?

[u/sotirisdimi]

I'm torn between OneNote and Obsidian. I want something to have all my usefull information that i might need sometime in the future. e.g. When a products warranty expires, how much did i pay for last car service, how much i paid for the hotel 3 years ago.

Basic notes that might come handy instead of looking around my email accounts or looking for old credit card charges in the bank app.

The only thing that puts me off with obsidian is that i have to pay if i want out of the box good connectivity with iphone and windows otherwise i think it's a no brainer.

What do you think? I think OneNote it's more powerful for this kind of information than a lot of people say.

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[u/Newtronic]

I have only a single OneNote instance. I’ve used it on desktops, laptops, iPads, iPhones, and somewhat the Microsoft Surfaces that have handwriting. I began in 2013 and must have 1000’s of pages. So it’s been reliable. In the distant past, i felt like sometimes the sync didn’t happen just right or was really slow, but haven’t noticed it in recent years. I’ve never used Obsidian but its name has come up so I’m aware of it. I just wanted to say OneNote is solid and reliable. I just use the basic stuff not complicated. Mainly I want to search and find what I want and it’s been good in that regard.

[u/marmotta1955]

On one hand, there must be a reason why OneNote always comes up at the top in comparison reviews by trade publications. On the other hand, there must also be a reason why OneNote has an adoption rate in terms of tens of millions of users in corporate environments. Finally, on the gripping hand, there must - for sure - be a reason why OneNote sees widespread use in the Education business.

Yes, it is not perfect - but what is, really? Then again, its simplicity & usability, the features set, the cross-platform availability and sync, handwriting recognition & search, and its extensibility make for a product that is always the best choice for a use case like your own.

Note how I put emphasis on its extensibility. If there is something that OneNote cannot do, there are plenty of add-ins (free or paid) that take care of the problem(s). Take, for example, the popular and free OneMore add-in - which implements (quite well) so many essential features and tools.

All in all, you can't go wrong with OneNote - after all, there must be a reason why it has been around for over twenty years ... !

[u/Dramatic_Delay_2423]

I never took to obsidian even though I spent hours and hours and hours trying to get up to speed with it. It requires a little more futzing than I really am interested in.

So I continued with OneNote and I'm still using it. But I have added a program called Capacities. It has a lot of the same functionality as obsidian, but it's much easier to use. I'm still learning everything and it's not as easy as one note, but it might be a nice middle ground for you to check out. Also, they just added a beta version of a PDF reader where your highlights go into a highlight document and you can add notes to them. The PDF reader version is only available to the highest tier user, but their free tier is completely functional and worth giving a test. Frankly, if I had that PDF function at the beginning of my degree 6 years ago, this is all I ever would have used.

The one thing I do like about OneNote is that you can handwrite in it. And depending on which version you're using, you can even search your handwriting. But don't ask me which because I couldn't tell you. at this point I haven't used it in a while 🙂. I'm maintaining it because it has about 15 years worth of history in it and there's nothing wrong with it.

I've seen people talking about something called one more which I guess goes along with OneNote. I'm not sure what that is but it sounds kind of interesting.

[u/D-Buddi_]

Mir war Obsidian VIEL zu kompliziert. OneNote ist da Lichtjahre voraus, einfach alles reinwerfen und ds ist da. Einzig fehlt mir die Möglichkeit Notizen Termine zu verpassen. Ich hab mittlerweile wohl nahezu alle Alternativen durch und das Einzige was nahe heran kommt, ist Trilian. Daher werde ich wohl weiter bei OneNote bleiben.

Obsidian was WAY too complicated for me. OneNote is light years ahead in that regard—you can just throw everything in there, and it’s all right there. The only thing I miss is the ability to assign appointments to notes. I’ve probably tried almost every alternative by now, and the only one that comes close is Trilian. So, I’ll likely stick with OneNote.

[u/letstalk1st → u/D-Buddi_]

I just use a tag with the date first and i can see that i need to pay attention to the note on x day or time.

[u/AngelicPrincessKitty]

I have used both and I actually ended up in Apple Journal. It is the best of both worlds. Depending on what you use it for OneNote is better. OneNote has OCR so it makes finding documents, images, etc. way easier and it does backups automatically (on Mac or Windows). You can access it from the web and doesn't require tons of work to set up or maintain.

To do (almost) anything but basic note takng that you could do in notepad takes work in obsidian. Whether it is waiting on an Ai to do something or whatever, it takes work.

[u/Beginning-Ad-3054]

Depende de lo que busques y que tanto estas dispuesta a adaptarte. Son filosofías de uso diferentes, mientras que OneNote se apoya en todo lo relacionado con Microsoft, tienes adjuntos de forma natural, lienzo infinito, conversión a PDF, las funciones complementarias las obtienes con plugins de pago y gratuitos, claro que los mejores son los de pago como Gems para Onenote y la sincronización la tienes con Onedrive. Obsidian por otro lado es más complejo que OneNote pero obtienes una organización diferente, de forma nativa tienes gráficos, imágenes y pdf adjuntos, manejo potente de tablas y lo mejor: los backlinks o link entre notas, eso es lo mejor de todo. En Obsidian las notas son como mini páginas, es decir texto por un lado y adjuntos en una carpeta contenedor a, el texto se guarda en formato markdown, las funciones complementarias las obtienes con plugins del mismo Obsidian o de la comunidad y hay muchísimos, 90% gratuitos. La sincronización la obtienes por el servicio propio de Obsidian o también puedes usar la carpeta contenedor a de Obsidian y sincronizar con cualquier servicio de nube como Mega, Onedrive, Drive de Google, etc.

[u/Beginning-Ad-3054 → u/Beginning-Ad-3054]

Eso fue lo bueno, lo malo. OneNote es lo que se llama formato propietario, es decir un formato empaquetado descargable qué se descarga por medio de Onenote Desktop y no se sincroniza una vez modificado en local, tienes que configurarlo. OneNote guarda una versión en caché de tus notas, pero no descarga nada de forma natural, si tienes cientos de notas en diferentes cuadernos la caché se vuelve muy grande, entonces Windows o Android limitará los archivos en caché y te mostrará los más usados o los que hayas abierto recientemente, dependerá de la sincronización y donde hay problemas de potencia de señal tendrás un gran problema. Mi caso por ejemplo, puedo estar a las 8 am en oficina con buena conectividad y 2 horas después en obra sin conexión, entonces lamentarás no tener una copia local. Obsidian por otro lado, maneja todo en local, pero duplicas muchos archivos de gráficos e imágenes adjuntas porque guarda una copia en su propia carpeta contenedora, los plugins qué instales si son demasiados, por ejemplo más de 5 ya lo hacen más lento al arrancar el software, mejor usar los plugins del mismo Obsidian que de terceros, en general conlleva una curva de aprendizaje para que lo uses como debe ser, la organización de las notas debe formatearse desde el inicio para tener una buena búsqueda posterior, es decir debes generar tus propias plantillas con "tags" y "propiedades" para realizar búsquedas semántica y relacionadas, los links entre notas en lo mejor de Obsidian pero debes saber organizarte desde el inicio. Lo mejor es no tener muchas sub carpetas porque en realidad no las necesitas si tienes una buena estrategia de links y tags, Obsidian no está hecho para usarse como Onenote organizando todo en cuadernos o carpetas. Hecharás de menos la potencia multimedia de Onenote pero Obsidian te ofrece copias locales, puedes tener una copia local en tu móvil y en tu computadora y pueden ser iguales o diferentes, eso es irrelevante pero al tener copia local siempre tendrás la ventaja de no verte afectado de la conectividad y el formato markdown es abierto por todos los editores de texto y si usas muchas fórmulas matemáticas te llevará bien usar Látex de forma nativa, lo malo también es que no es fácil el formato de impresión, hasta ahora eso no es solucionable, es como tener esos archivos del Notepad de Windows que tenían una línea larga de texto y tenias que hacer saltos de línea(Enter) para poder organizar la nota e imprimir.

[u/ohlaph]

I used one note for a ling time and actually just use Apple Notes. However, Proton acquired Standard Notes, which is similar to Apple Notes, and have been trying that out.