I should have mentioned OneNote 2010 will be in ProPlus yesterday

In addition to the link I posted yesterday to sign up for the technical preview, I should have mentioned OneNote will be added to the ProPlus SKU for the next release of Office. For those that don’t know the lingo, “SKU” is shorthand for stock keeping unit. As I was taught when I was working at Kroger way back in the day, it refers to any item that can be tracked in inventory. A gallon of milk, a 16 ounce can of peas, or in this case, it is a “box of Office.” So in general, I like to think of this as a “box” with the CD/DVD in it for Office. The interesting information here is that the Pro Plus SKU is sold only to volume deals to businesses – you can’t buy that “box of Office” from your local retailer like the consumer editions of Office.

From a customer point of view, though, this is still great. Every so often our discussion group has a question on why someone has OneNote 2007 on one computer but not a second. It almost always is because that person’s company bought the Pro edition for work and the user has the Home edition for home use. Since we weren’t in Pro Plus before, the company machine never had OneNote.

For test, though, the answer is a little trickier. This becomes a new setup test for this release, and then becomes an extra column in an upgrade matrix for future releases. I’ll write more on setup testing later. But that is a price I am willing to pay to get OneNote to even more people!

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,
John