I have already posted a couple of times here about Devon, and how powerful an academic tool this can be. The Devon website has just added some tutorials to the Devon Academy. As they point out these are rather basic tutorials, and are for those who are just getting started, but I think they are worth a glance for everyone. I have been using DevonThink and DevonAgent a great deal lately and plan to do a series of posts on how I am using them, but in the meantime check out the Academy. (Here’s one hint: using it track all of the student’s online work, in one easy collection.)
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Interesting point. For the past few weeks I have been searching for just the right tool to get all my research material (2 GBs worth of files) organised and easily searchable. I have reached a point where I just can’t recall where I read that particular piece of info, which article or document!? This is the time that I really go for it as my academic studies re PhD are about to start.
Searching across both windows and mac formats evaluating both pros and cons of the academic tools available on the system I have found Devonthink to be the closest to what I need – there really is no alternative in Windows. One just cannot get surprised enough at the amount of academic and user-friendly software coming out for the Mac considering it only represents 2% of all PC users!
I could not think of switching to Mac due to my investment in some stats software for windows but now I don’t have to worry about that as I can run them on a Mac too. Thanks for you insights into this software and all the other software you have pointed towards. I am really interested in Mellel and Mac reference programmes eg. Bookends and Sente, I really want to throw this bloatware and the exponent of user-unfriendly features named Endnote.
Will look forward to your mail re Devonthink and other stuff. Keep it up.
Yes I too looked thru many programs for organizing information, as much of what I do now includes materials beyond the print/analog form, and I needed a way to hold web pages, journal articles, written notes, video files, and after working on this, I discovered nothing came close to Devon. Devon I would argue now constitutes a reason to switch to Mac. But as you point out there is the problem with data crunching software only exisiting for the PC (luckily for those of us in the Humanities this is not a problem). I continue to learn things about Devon, and am convinced there is little this program can’t handle.
Definetly give Sente and Bookends a try, I found them far more useful than endnotes.
Which incarnation of Devon are you using? Professional?
I have Professional, is there a specific feature for which you are looking?
No specific feature. The “Infoworker’s Pro Bundle” looks to be the best buy, especially with the academic discount… but I was just curious as to which version you were using.
I also have Devon Agent, and was going to post about it here soon. But brief summary . . .it’s as fantastic as Devon Think.
I didn’t like DEVONThink’s UI so much, and I went with Yojimbo. It’s great: simple and thought-through. Mac-only though…
Concerning an Endnote-like program, I would go with Bookends – but right now, as a student, I’m happy enough with BibDesk (for use with LaTeX).
Sebastian
I agree, Yojimbo has a much better UI. Indeed my only real complaint about Devon is that the UI is sometimes un-Mac like. But for my interest it is a workable trade-off as the extra power of Devon is useful. On the lines of UI though you might want to check out Sente as its UI is better than Bookends (or a little more Mac-like). But Zotero might be the best option and it is free.