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General Software Discussion / Re: General brainstorming for Note-taking software
« Last post by Armando on September 15, 2007, 12:31 AM »Interesting thoughts on the nature of note-taking software and PIMs. Thanks.
IMO, "Consolidation" (if I understand what you mean by that) is not always nice and is often a synonym of compromise (not always though! Not always!
).
Yes, I tend to condense everything that has to do with goals, needs, projects, to-dos, calendar events, important reference lists, etc. in Outlook (for very pragmatic purpose : want to have access to that data with my Palm), but tend to keep everything else in separate documents (usually doc or pdf, for text). I have thousands of documents, and everything is easily accessible through an organizational system I've created for myself, using X1 and farr. I don’t really miss any true consolidated "database". (Well… not with the currently available solutions, and the compromises I feel I’d have to make ; but I do keep my eyes open for potential solutions…). What I mostly miss is something that doesn't really exist : a consolidated, powerfull, full featured and lightweight interface to access everything on my computer. Something Like X1 meets farr meets Directory Opus meets tag2find, an interface that would use the whole file system as the back end for the ultimate PIM or Note Taking software (to paraphrase Jimdoria who said something similar, somewhere in this thread).
Anyway....I guess it all depends on what kind of info you want to store, how you want to be able to access it, and how you later want to use it. I've pondered for a while about whether I should use Ultra Recall, MyBase, TreeDBNotes PRO, etc. and if they would constitute viable solutions to my organizational problems. My (again.... very personal) conclusion (after trying many softwre for many weeks) is that they wouldn't really help me enough and would actually slow me down. These apps often impose many restrictions on data (tend to destroy formatting, makes duplication necessary or won't preserve links between their database and external documents, don’t have searching capabilities as powerful as dedicated desktop search tools, etc. etc.). So I've decided to keep it more simple, avoid unnecessary (for me) steps, and instead use the powerful desktop search software at hand + intelligent document naming + useful AHK scripts.
As for “note-taking” software per se (ie : software I use to just dump unclassified stuff)… well, I'm still using my note-taking software of choice (EverNote) BUT much less than I used to... and I tend to empty its database every week or so.
And... yes... Superboyac did a fantastic job with the note-taking software review, but it’s true that some of the description/analysis can seem a bit simplistic… but, hey, let’s admit that it would’ve been terribly hard to go into great details for each of the programs mentioned!!!! Not to mention, that this thread already contains details on many of the mentioned apps (if one is willing to search for them...)
Maybe you could offer a mini-review of TreeDBNotes? I’m sure people here would find it interesting.
IMO, "Consolidation" (if I understand what you mean by that) is not always nice and is often a synonym of compromise (not always though! Not always!
).Yes, I tend to condense everything that has to do with goals, needs, projects, to-dos, calendar events, important reference lists, etc. in Outlook (for very pragmatic purpose : want to have access to that data with my Palm), but tend to keep everything else in separate documents (usually doc or pdf, for text). I have thousands of documents, and everything is easily accessible through an organizational system I've created for myself, using X1 and farr. I don’t really miss any true consolidated "database". (Well… not with the currently available solutions, and the compromises I feel I’d have to make ; but I do keep my eyes open for potential solutions…). What I mostly miss is something that doesn't really exist : a consolidated, powerfull, full featured and lightweight interface to access everything on my computer. Something Like X1 meets farr meets Directory Opus meets tag2find, an interface that would use the whole file system as the back end for the ultimate PIM or Note Taking software (to paraphrase Jimdoria who said something similar, somewhere in this thread).
Anyway....I guess it all depends on what kind of info you want to store, how you want to be able to access it, and how you later want to use it. I've pondered for a while about whether I should use Ultra Recall, MyBase, TreeDBNotes PRO, etc. and if they would constitute viable solutions to my organizational problems. My (again.... very personal) conclusion (after trying many softwre for many weeks) is that they wouldn't really help me enough and would actually slow me down. These apps often impose many restrictions on data (tend to destroy formatting, makes duplication necessary or won't preserve links between their database and external documents, don’t have searching capabilities as powerful as dedicated desktop search tools, etc. etc.). So I've decided to keep it more simple, avoid unnecessary (for me) steps, and instead use the powerful desktop search software at hand + intelligent document naming + useful AHK scripts.
As for “note-taking” software per se (ie : software I use to just dump unclassified stuff)… well, I'm still using my note-taking software of choice (EverNote) BUT much less than I used to... and I tend to empty its database every week or so.
And... yes... Superboyac did a fantastic job with the note-taking software review, but it’s true that some of the description/analysis can seem a bit simplistic… but, hey, let’s admit that it would’ve been terribly hard to go into great details for each of the programs mentioned!!!! Not to mention, that this thread already contains details on many of the mentioned apps (if one is willing to search for them...)
Maybe you could offer a mini-review of TreeDBNotes? I’m sure people here would find it interesting.
. (I've even seen a version 2.5 advertised, but wasn't able to download it.)
