Chris Pratley has recently posted over at Tablet PC Buzz of a technical beta for the next release of One Note 12:
I know many of you here are looking forward to the next release of OneNote (which we codenamed "OneNote 12"). Since you're so committed, I thought I would offer you folks here in the Buzz a special chance to take part in the upcoming technical beta.
If you are interested in participating in the beta please let me know. Send mail to chrispr(at)microsoft.com with the mail address you would like us to use when contacting you, and use the subject line "OneNote beta signup". I can accept entrants for the next week or so, so please don't delay.
Note: the tech beta is going to be a little nasty so if you are not into trying out software that has a lot of problems you should wait for the "preview" which is coming in the spring. Also, if you don't feel you have time or inclination to really try this out and give us feedback, please consider waiting for preview since we really need committed testers for the tech beta.
OneNote SP2 solves some minor issues but not the major problem that ails me. My main problem even with 2GB of memory installed on each of my Tablets sharing the same notebook is that there major performance issues and some very noticable hangs. I am hoping(fingers crossed) that the addition of Multiple Notebooks will solve my issue of severe lag times in launching One Note, Switching between tabs and sections, etc.
I am really looking forward to alot of the features mentioned like the new layers, OCR support, PDF support , "real shared notebooks" support, etc. The One Note team are making some great improvements and are adding a ton of new features, it is amazing what they are working on. There are some great new features that I can't mention, that are coming as well that got me itching to try. :)
I am patiently waiting, well not too patiently, but paitiently enough for me...I am really stoked for this!