Article:		Outboard Brains for Mac OS X
Subject:		DEVONthink
Date:		2003-08-06 16:55:04
From:		lolajl
Response to: DEVONthink
I'm trying out Devon Think, and I think it's a bit of an overkill. What I'm doing is comparing it with NoteTaker (I'll get around to NoteBook once I get a feeling for it) and creating a list of Blackberry device options (I'm thinking about getting one of these) in each program and seeing how well each program does what I want. What I'm trying to do ths is: Telecommunications device Blackberry T-Sidekick Blah, blah, and store notes about each one. DevonThink GUI is not very intuitive and involves too much clicking around. Create a folder, then click on icon and create a rich text file. Paste in URL and it isn't a hotlink. NoteTaker - create items in an outline format simply by using key combos, drag-drop URL, click on it and be able to bring it up in the browser. I downloaded Devon's manual and it's way too technospeak for my taste, and no pictures. If I had pictures to go along with what's in this manual, maybe I'd grok this program better. Right now, Notetaker wins out. I'm not sure exactly what it is that I'm missing with Devon. If there was a sample file provided with the demo, I'd understand it better as to what it's supposed to be doing.

Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.

• DEVONthink
  2003-08-11 23:57:33  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  It's *really* easy to get URL's and other info into DEVONthink, just select whatever you want and hit a keyboard command... to make a new document, click a button or select menu item or use it's keyboard command, same as always. Seems like a fairly slick Cocoa GUI to me. Basically it offers dope clipping services and impressive functions like summerization, concordance, and keyword comparisons.
  Notetaker is pretty cool and you can stick probably any file type in it- a major advantage over DEVONthink, and an outline format is a definate advantage in a note-taker. In the end i went with DEVONthink, cause Notetaker kinda of felt like some giant Filemaker solution or something... DEVONthink costs half as much and feels like it weighs half as much too.

• DEVONthink
  2003-08-07 09:44:14  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Try this. Start up DEVONthink. Besides the search feature, at the bottom of the main window you will notice the "classify" and "see also" buttons, both of which are insanely useful. The best thing about DEVONthink, though is its service menu, so that if you are in Safari, you can simply highlight part of a web page or the entire thing and easily take a note to add into the database. handles pdf archiving wonderfully.