Good Alternatives to MS OneNote

Yesterday I had discussed the use of MS OneNote here and how useful it is.  EverNote is an alternative but not quite there.  Today I found two good alternatives that somehow are quite like OneNote.

Action Outline
First one is ActionOutline.  It comes in 3 versions – Free (lite), Standard ($39.95), and Pro ($79.95).  Pro can be used to share docs in a network while Standard is stand alone.

Instead of the file/folder format of MS OneNote, ActionOutline (and TheGuide as well) use the tree format – which is also useful.

The Guide
Second is TheGuide.  This one is free.. and has basically the same functionality as the Standard version of ActionOutline has.  So, I would go with this one.  Rather interestingly, it also provides support for a number of languages – like Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, Greek, Arabic, Sanskrit, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Kannada.  So you can choose in what language you want to write your notes.

Important feature – you can search the entire tree or a subtree – this feature in OneNote has been a big blessing for me at times!

How can it be used?  You can give a structure to any “project” – IT project, Home assignment a novel, research paper, Book list, list of recipes, travel itinerary or business proposal – and then fill in the information you want.

I haven’t tried these two myself so I cannot talk about their performance, but from the look of it and because it is free, I will definitely try TheGuide!