James Fallows on The Personal Brain

Posted by Tom S.
Sep 2, 2009 at 08:17 PM

For those who are curious about this I’ve been using it and I have contacted the company with a number of questions. I had to email them twice before I got an answer but got a very prompt response the second time.

You need the Pro version to get a license which is cross platform. The license is extremely restrictive. Two registered computers with the company and in order to switch computers, you need to uninstall the program and send them a screenshot before they will clear the old computer from your license and allow a new installation.

You can use the free version on any computer but only the free features will work. I have yet to determine exactly what this means or how far this will take me when using a brain that was created and edited with the Pro version. In addition the program *does* work over an ssh connection between Mac/Linux computers. Meaning that you don’t need it on the computer if your network is fast enough to support this comfortably.

In terms of usability, the program has been pretty stable and responsive for me, a significant issue given that the program is written in Java.

The Mac version does what they say it will and the editor is better than I thought it would be. For the record, Stephen, as in Word when you double click on a single word, the word is selected. If triple click inside a paragraph, the whole paragraph is selected. So that at least works.

However, all of this is true of the *Mac* version. The Linux version is behind and I’ve no idea if and when they plan to fix its limitations. Don’t get me wrong - its usable. But there’s no drag and drop from the desktop or from Firefox, the editor doesn’t have the triple click example above and occasionally it will randomly change fonts in the middle of a sentence. There are some odd things about the copy and paste operations, too. For instance, when pasting from the web browser, you need to be in HTML view. In order to add a file to the brain internally, you need to add it as a link, write click on it and choose the option to transer it in. Again, all of this is drag and drop in the Mac version.

The brain can be exported from the Pro version and uploaded to a company website. From here the brain can be viewed in any web browser, including on an iPhone. I have tried this and it works reasonably well but it is limited. Certain features like tagging aren’t implemented in the web view yet. And, of course, its read only.

Printing is an issue. Because the assumption is that you are going to be printing the whole brain or a significant portion of it, the font is small. I had a tough time working around this but it may be that with more finagling, I can get a better result. There are options I haven’t tried.

There are no indications that the Linux versions are limited in their manual. The instructions for exporting and uploading the exported brain weren’t clear enough and I had to get instructions from tech support before I could do it. But the manual is otherwise pretty good and reasonably complete, an indication that these guys are serious, that they’re in it to make money and that they have some idea how to do it.

I haven’t decided whether I will buy it.

Tom S.