I was reading through the November 2008 thread where folks were listing off what they were using and for what purpose and learnt about a few new programs.

I'm curious as to how setups have changed in nearly a year.

My own setup is pretty minimal.

Most standard PIM stuff is being done through Google - Gmail and GCal, with Remember the Milk thrown in for to-do lists.

I'll probably switch to a desktop client (considering Postbox) since I've now got multiple e-mail addresses to track.

Evernote 3 as a note repository, though I'm starting to find it somewhat underpowered for my needs. Only issue is being in love with the web sync (and being able to access it from my Blackberry...not enough desktop software syncs with the Blackberry, damnit!)

I've been toying with TKOutline for writing outlines, transitioning from doing them with pen and paper.

OpenOffice.org or sometimes Google Docs for most work. Though, there is a freeware word processor called Q10 I'm kind of fond of. Has the stripped down DOS word processor look, but with live word count (a feature missing from almost every Windows word processor except Word 2007)

Having one foot in the PC/Windows world and one in the Mac, I'll break this rollcall into two.

First, the PC (which I use primarily at the office for my day job as a sales/marketing director for a small, nonprofit publisher):

- Zoot remains my primary information organizing tool. It captures information easily and automatically organizes it. I have several years worth of clippings within it. Additionally, I use it to maintain catalog information about our books, because it is so easy to save filtered views. There are only two things that keep me from using Zoot exclusively: It's lack of text formatting, which is not always necessary, but sometimes is; and some of its quirks, especially relating to printing, a genuine weakness.

- OneNote is my project organizer. I create a section for each new project, where I collect related documents, e-mails and notes. OneNote is pretty good at creating a quick table of information, even if the table functions are somewhat primative. So far I have not used the shared notebook option, but hope to soon, as my office is about to adopt OneNote. That will open a whole new area of collaboration.

- I'm still tryng to settle on the best application for keeping a daily log of activities. Either Zoot or OneNote can handle this okay -- in fact, I'm currently using ON -- but I feel like there should be a better option.

- Outlook is my e-mail program. I generally don't use a to-do list, but if I were to use one, I'd use the combination of Outlook and OneNote, which can share task information.

- I've been experimenting with shifting our catalog data to ConnectedText, which would have the advantage of being able to generate a web site.


On the Mac:

- I'm still in flux about which application works best. Consequently, I've been using redundancy. I put most information into DevonThink, but I'm really not sold on DT. It feels clumsy and awkward to me. Plus, I'm not crazy about the fact that the company sold upgrades to version 2.0 last December and still haven't released anything but a series of betas.

- I've been finding TinderBox really helpful for its graphic/visual presentation of information. I don't make it my main information repository, but use it when I need to do some planning or thinking about a project.

- Curio is an amazing application, yet I don't use it as much as I would have expected given its great versatility. The promised Index Card function may change that, when it comes out.

- I use MacJournal for my personal journal.

- I use Scrivener for writing longer pieces, although I've not been as thrilled by S as I was expecting or hoping (it was the main reason I bought a MacBook in the first place). This may have more to do with my writing style than anything. I find I generally don't like to write in small, quantum chunks. I prefer to see my work growing as a holistic work.

- I've been trying out Evernote again, not because I think it is all that great, but because it can sync my information pretty seamlessly between the PC and the Mac.

And, since I have CRIMP, you can bet there are many additional programs that I dabble with, always looking for something that just works better.

Steve Z.

My usage tracks Steve's - except that I hardly use Windows nowadays, preferring the uniformity and harmony of working on the Mac.

- I spend most time in Scrivener. Whilst I too am probably more "holistic than random-chunk" in writing approach, I like many of the application's other features, such as full-screen, keywords and synopses.

- I too use DevonThink for large-scale storage. Development of Version 2 has certainly been slow, but because I owned a licence for 1.x, I've had seven months' partly "free" use of the 2.0 betas.

- I have licences for previous versions of Tinderbox and Curio. I may upgrade one or both when TB goes to 5.0 and C to index cards, but I haven't quite had the use out of them so far that their prices would justify. Having praised both applications here, I'm pleased that TB has proved useful for you Steve. For some users on the Mac, getting to grips with TB seems almost like a test of intellectual virility, irrespective of intrinsic value! But your Tinderbox "adornments matrix" sounds very interesting and potentially very useful.

- Because DevonThink hasn't so far handled snippets very well, and Scrivener isn't designed for them, I too bought a licence for MacJournal - as a snippets bin. With its Quicknote entry it's performed that function very well, better than Journler. But now that DT appears to want to be the absolutely ultimate Mac datastore, and is threatening to have a quicknote entry too, I may eventually move all my research and ideas over.

- I use TAO for outlining. It would be the perfect outliner if it were guaranteed stable and not so darn complicated to learn and use.

H

Hasn't changed much in the past year - which says something because I've tried out quite a few task managers and notetaking apps over the past year, but have not adopted any of the new ones.

Todo: Outlook, with Taskline Plugin
Email: Outlook, with ClearContext Plugin
Calendar: Outlook
Notes, Research, web clippings and bookmarks: Evernote

Note: I would probably not use Outlook as much but for the fact that it syncs so effortlessly with my Blackberry.

dan7000 wrote:

Hasn't changed much in the past year - which says something because I've tried out
quite a few task managers and notetaking apps over the past year, but have not adopted
any of the new ones.

Todo: Outlook, with Taskline Plugin
Email: Outlook, with
ClearContext Plugin
Calendar: Outlook
Notes, Research, web clippings and
bookmarks: Evernote

Note: I would probably not use Outlook as much but for the fact
that it syncs so effortlessly with my Blackberry.

That was the only reason I used Outlook for a while as well. I stopped using it because I was sick of it choking on IMAP connections.

I really wish more stuff would integrate with the Blackberry the way it seems a lot of desktop software used to sync with Palm devices.

dan7000 wrote:

Todo: Outlook, with Taskline Plugin
Email: Outlook, with
ClearContext Plugin
Calendar: Outlook
Notes, Research, web clippings and
bookmarks: Evernote

Just as a matter of curiosity, since you are using it for everything else, why aren't you using Outlook for the last category? Its a click of a button with a browser plugin to send webpages as emails. Why not make it all in one? What are the advantage of Evernote?

Tom S.

Todo: ConnectedText
Email: Thunderbird
Calendar: ConnectedText
Notes, Research, web clippings, and first drafts: ConnectedText
Writing (final drafts): Atlantis Word Processor

Manfred

Todo: Rainlendar, synced with Remember the Milk and Thunderbird/Lightning
Email: Thunderbird
Calendar: Rainlendar, synced with Lightning and Google Calendar
Notes, research, web clippings: Local Website Archive, Clipcache Pro, Notezilla, ConnectedText
Writing: WriteMonkey, MS Word 2003, PageFour

Rainlendar (http://www.rainlendar.net has been my best discovery this year. It sits permanently on my desktop (it has a "desktop mode", if that makes sense, and I had wanted a powerful desktop calendar for some time). The paid version adds sharing networked calendars, Outlook and Google Calendar support.

Using iCalendar (.ics) files, Rainlendar seamlessly syncs with a variety of programs and online services (see my examples above - for the programs I use, all syncs are bi-directional). I've only been using Rainlendar for a month or so, but I've never had a sync issue with it, and Rainlendar maintains multiple backups in any case.

I have become so enthusiastic about the program that I even created my own (sober, minimalist) skin for it -- many of the available skins are a bit...funky.

Here are my choices:

Todo: Chaos Intellect
Email: Windows Live Mail
Calendar: Chaos Intellect
Research and web clippings: WebResearch Pro & Evernote
Outlining: MyNotesKeeper & MyInfo (haven't yet decided)
Notes and first drafts: ConnectedText
Writing (final drafts): ConnectedText & Word 2007

But I also own MyBase, TreePad, Surfulater, and ZuluPad Pro. Yes, I'm a PIM-junkie .

Glen

User of:

Todo: MyLife Organized
Email: Pocomail
Calendar: TimeTo, when I have to
Writing: SuperNotecard
Research, notes, ... : UltraRecall

Owner of few others (most mentioned in this thread), but scarcely using those.
Waiting for Zoot 6

Tom S. wrote:

dan7000 wrote:

>Todo: Outlook, with Taskline Plugin
>Email: Outlook, with

>ClearContext Plugin
>Calendar: Outlook
>Notes, Research, web clippings and

>bookmarks: Evernote

Just as a matter of curiosity, since you are using it for
everything else, why aren't you using Outlook for the last category? Its a click of a
button with a browser plugin to send webpages as emails. Why not make it all in one? What
are the advantage of Evernote?

Tom S.

If I understand your question, you're asking why not use Outlook to store notes and web clippings? Overall, I find Outlook slow and cumbersome. EN is fast and light. Search in Outlook is horrendous, and there is no good tagging mechanism. EN has fairly fast search and excellent tagging. Also, EN captures web pages fairly accurately and quickly.

Really, I'd prefer to do it the other way: I wish I could use EN for todos, calendar, and email. Indeed, I've been thinking of moving all my emails into EN so that I can search and organize them better. Unfortunately, EN has no calendaring, and its todo mechanism is basically useless.

After downloading, installing, evaluating and sometimes buying almost every PIM and outliner ever created, I really only use OneNote 2007 any more. I use it as a permanent archive for information that I need to save for a long time (serial numbers, contacts, research articles, etc.) IMO, OneNote is the best PIM available these days, partly because it's a Microsoft product and not likely to just vanish overnight. It has a good web capture and does everything I need.

I tried the Brain and while I'm impressed with it, I still haven't found a good use for it and the interface in general is a little complex for my needs. Also, it takes a while to open and there's no easy way to do web captures and so on.

I occasionally use NoteMap v2 for outlining, but most of the time, I just dictate my outlines, brainstorming sessions, notes, etc., using Dragon Naturally Speaking v9.5. I'll dictate directly at my laptop or I'll use a voice recorder (Philips 9600 DPM) while I'm driving around in my car, then transcribe the dictation directly into Word when I get home. Dictation's a thousand times faster than writing at a keyboard and it's a great tool for research and brainstorming.

I'm a fiction writer and I just started using a fantastic screenwriting app called Movie Outline to assemble the structured outlines for my various projects. Movie Outline is similar in some ways to a two-pane outliner, but it has a lot of other features that are used to write formatted screenplays, create characters, compare your script to other scripts, etc. It's rock solid and so far I'm really impressed with it. Hopefully, they won't go out of business any time soon.

My goal these days is to dictate everything and switch to using audio files instead of text files as much as possible. Speed and simplicity are the Holy Grail. For example, I can dictate an outline for a novel on my voice recorder and as long as I follow a specific format I can then transcribe the dictation into a text file and import the text file directly into Movie Outline, ending up with a structured step outline with associated notes and so on. It's easy and let's me get more work done while I'm driving around.

dan7000 wrote:

If I understand your question, you're asking why not use
Outlook to store notes and web clippings? Overall, I find Outlook slow and
cumbersome. EN is fast and light. Search in Outlook is horrendous, and there is no good
tagging mechanism. EN has fairly fast search and excellent tagging. Also, EN
captures web pages fairly accurately and quickly.

Really, I'd prefer to do it the
other way: I wish I could use EN for todos, calendar, and email. Indeed, I've been
thinking of moving all my emails into EN so that I can search and organize them better.
Unfortunately, EN has no calendaring, and its todo mechanism is basically useless.

The Windows Live Search is pretty fast and its more extensible since it will search virtually anything on your computer as well. And Outlook has tags and, though they aren't hierarchical which is annoying, you can use rules to assign them. Overall, I'd say Outlook is considerably more powerful on the desktop.

[shrug] Still, I can understand if you don't want to feed MS. I don't have a Windows computer at all any more and only run it in a virtual machine when its absolutely necessary. Lots of people love Evernote. I've just never understood why.

Tom S.

Tom S. said:

The Windows Live Search is pretty fast and its more extensible since it
will search virtually anything on your computer as well. And Outlook has tags and,
though they aren't hierarchical which is annoying, you can use rules to assign them.
Overall, I'd say Outlook is considerably more powerful on the desktop.

[shrug]
Still, I can understand if you don't want to feed MS. I don't have a Windows computer at
all any more and only run it in a virtual machine when its absolutely necessary. Lots of
people love Evernote. I've just never understood why.

So I downloaded Windows Search again yesterday. I had installed it before, but it did something bad so I deleted it -- can't remember what. I had been using Copernic for a while but deleted it too recently.

You're right. Windows search is very nice so far - really very fast. But I'm not sure what you mean that Outlook "has tags"? I don't see it. Maybe you're referring to Outlook 2007 (which I also had but reverted to 2003)? Are there tags in Outlook2003 that I'm not seeing? Or are you referring to categories? If you're referring to categories, here are some things you can do with EN tags you can't do with categories:
- with one click in the left pane, see all the notes with a particular tag and nothing else.
- assign multiple notes to one tag quickly
- search by tag without having to go into a special "advanced search" dialog first.

A few other advantages of EN for web clippings: it offers one-click clipping from most browsers (can't do with Outlook that I know of) and EN stores the source URL in a special field.

Additionally, I just don't see Outlook as having a good notekeeping interface. Outlook is set up to view 3 types of data: emails, todo, and calendar entries. Keeping notes to myself or web clippings in outlook as 'emails' seems like a kludge. (It goes without saying that one wouldn't use the Outlook "notes" feature, which doesn't even offer rich text).

Finally, I stand by my comment about Outlook being slow. I swear, I click on an item in Outlook and the thing freezes for a few seconds before I can do anything. It is a total dog.

I am not an MS-avoider by any means: I have always favored MS products when they work well. And I agree that Outlook is by far the best calendar interface out there, has a top-rate email interface, and, for me, provides just the right to-do interface. I just don't envision using Outlook for notes, because it doesn't have the right features or interface, and the performance is not good enough.

dan7000 wrote:

But I'm not sure what you mean that Outlook "has
tags"? I don't see it. Maybe you're referring to Outlook 2007 (which I also had but
reverted to 2003)? Are there tags in Outlook2003 that I'm not seeing? Or are you
referring to categories? If you're referring to categories, here are some things you
can do with EN tags you can't do with categories:
- with one click in the left pane, see
all the notes with a particular tag and nothing else.
- assign multiple notes to one
tag quickly
- search by tag without having to go into a special "advanced search"
dialog first.

Your point is well taken in that this probably is easier in Evernote in that its specifically designed to deal with this in mind. A couple things:

1) I usually group emails and whatever else ends up in Outlook by category with the groups collapsed. Scrolling down to the appropriate one is usually trivial.
2) Save a search for a category as a smart folder (I believe the search would be "category:my-category" but someone can correct me if that's wrong. This basically gives you everything in it with one click.

A few other advantages of EN for web clippings: it offers one-click
clipping from most browsers (can't do with Outlook that I know of) and EN stores the
source URL in a special field.

Its one click of the "Send To" button with Google toolbar installed in your browser. Similar toolbars from MS and Yahoo probably have something similar. Again your point is well taken in that Evernote is specifically designed to do this and doesn't require that you put in your email (in fairness, a matter of a couple letters and the "tab" key) and hit the "Send" button. But if I remember right, Evernote also requires the installation of a plugin.

Additionally, I just don't see Outlook as having a
good notekeeping interface. Outlook is set up to view 3 types of data: emails, todo,
and calendar entries. Keeping notes to myself or web clippings in outlook as 'emails'
seems like a kludge. (It goes without saying that one wouldn't use the Outlook "notes"
feature, which doesn't even offer rich text).

You can post a note to a email folder. It is, in fact, called "Post" (File->New->Post). It is, of course, basically like working within Word after that as far as rich text is concerned. Probably considerably better than Evernote in this respect. You can edit it later, as well.

Finally, I stand by my comment about
Outlook being slow. I swear, I click on an item in Outlook and the thing freezes for a few
seconds before I can do anything. It is a total dog.

Yeah, I don't doubt it. In your case its a question of whether its worth having it all in one place or not. And, again, you get all of the advantages of working within Office and Outlook with rules, etc... But if that's not important either, Evernote is undoubtedly a better choice.

Cheers,

Tom S.

My setup is 'reduced to the max':
- PersonalBrain
- Word
- Excel

Dominik

Hi.

I use Windows PCs for my freelance job as a journalist (covering mainly Microsoft Office) and a Mac Mini for creative work and fun.

On Windows:

Outlook 2007 for e-mail, calendar, address book:
OpenOffice.org Calc for to-do lists
OpenOffice.org Writer and Word 2003/2007 for writing
Xmind for outlining when the outliner in Writer does not suffice
Info Select for accessing all the stuff I threw in in the last 10 years
OneOne 2007 for new projects and web snippets
Mindgenius Business for brainstorming and presenting

On the Mac:
Scrivener for writing and for storing the stuff I need for my novel
Tinderbox for brainstorming and shuffling ideas around

Franz

UltraRecall
Archivarius3000
pdf-xchange viewer (to make notes inside pdf files, which are then indexed by Archivarius)

Just discovered Xmind replacing old version of MindMapper. Can't afford the update
Drifting away from Keynote, but optimistic about its development
Still using ECCO but not as much.
Microsoft Word 2003 for any finished product in academic work. Along with the dreaded PowerPoint for lectures
My favorite -- EvenNote for stashing notes, todo lists, research projects.

My deepest longing is still for a single pane outliner like PCOutline or Grandview

My WINDOWS setup (running Windows XP on notebook and office desktop; files synced via NomaDesk webdrive and SuperFlexible)

Todo: Notecase Pro syncing with Projekt (on Symbian smartphone) - Smatphone is the starting point

Email: The Bat! (need to change; testing Postbox and eagerly waiting for Zoot 6)

Calendar: Rainlendar atop Outlook database syncing with Symbian smartphone calendar app syncing with Google Calendar via GooSync - again, Smatphone is the starting point

Research and web clippings: Evernote and Surfulater / Linkstash for bookmarks

Outlining: UltraRecall for project information, mostly used as address book actually

Notes and first drafts: Brainstorm

Writing (final drafts): Word 2003

I have invested in some very powerful programs such as InfoQube but am not changing my setup at this point due to intense work.


My LINUX setup (running OpenSuse on netbook and Linux Mint on home desktop) includes only cross-platform or web applications for testing and complimenting my Windows work

Todo: Notecase Pro

Email: webmail (Gmail with POP access to all my account; also used as archive)

Calendar: Google Calendar

Research and web clippings: EverNote via bookmarklet (EN has no Linux client as yet)

I'm also playing around (not now actually) with some additional cross-platform applications: Xmind, Dokuwiki etc


One thing I can say about my setup is that it's quite resilient; I have rarely lost data, and when I have it's been mostly recovered quite quickly (knocks wood).

@ Tom S.: Dan said most that I would say on Evernote; I personally find its flexibility in data collection excellent; its tag system (which I was reluctant to use) is brilliant --you can assign tags when collecting information or later, you can organise them in infinite levels, rename them, etc. Most importantly, its cross-platform nature, automatic sync and web access make it for me unrivaled and indispensable.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Todo: Notecase Pro

As I am another Linux user, I would also like to echo Alexander's endorsement of Notecase. Its quite handy.

Email: webmail (Gmail with

Research and web clippings: EverNote via bookmarklet (EN has no Linux client as
yet)

@ Tom S.: Dan said most that I would
say on Evernote; I personally find its flexibility in data collection excellent; its
tag system (which I was reluctant to use) is brilliant --you can assign tags when
collecting information or later, you can organise them in infinite levels, rename
them, etc. Most importantly, its cross-platform nature, automatic sync and web
access make it for me unrivaled and indispensable.

I'm going to turn this on you because, like you, cross-platform is important to me. Although I was talking to Dan about Outlook, I rarely actually use it because I'm rarely in the Windows environment. I use gmail for almost everything of a non-business nature, including personal research and web-clippings. I have it all in one place.

How is what you described for Evernote different from gmail with the google toolbar's "send to" function? I find gmail's tagging system faster and easier to use with the relevant shortcut keys and all of my filing is consistent across every type of electronic data.

I'm not being argumentative. I'm really wondering if I'm missing something about Evernote.

Thanks,
Tom S.

Tom S. wrote:

How is what you
described for Evernote different from gmail with the google toolbar's "send to"
function? I find gmail's tagging system faster and easier to use with the relevant
shortcut keys and all of my filing is consistent across every type of electronic
data.

I've never used Gmail that way, so I can't comment much on the data collection itself. I think Dan already mentioned that EverNote maintains the source URL --I don't know if Gmail does that. I would add that from my own experience EverNote and Surfulater are very good at capturing web info in a way that is relatively faithful to the source, but also easy to read --and editable; does Gmail give you the ability to edit a message in your Inbox? I guess not.

I do use Gmail for mail and one of my main problems with it is its inability to organise messages in any kind of hierarchy, whether through folders or tags. Call me old-fashioned, but this is the only forum I have been following and contributing to for goodness knows how long, precisely because I need outlines to make sense of the world.

I'm not being argumentative. I'm really wondering if I'm missing something
about Evernote.

Other than the above, the main strength for me is offline access; EverNote started out as software rather than webware, and though now it's a hybrid, my data is always in my disk for me to access regardless of internet connection. Google Gears is for me a poor substitute for genuinely keeping the underlying database locally (+backing up on the web).

alx

Evernote became immediately more useful to me when I figured out i could send an item out to it by dragging it down to the Evernote slug in my Mac's dock.

I bought DevonThink for the hell of it, and can do something similar by dragging a file to the that little drawer which places itself at the edge of the screen.

In both cases, I sort stuff out at my leisure, after it's captured.

Other than that, I'm all Google, including Voice now, which is frightening. Transcribes voice messages with sufficient accuracy, and will let me shut down telemarketers as soon as I move all of my numbers to it.

I still miss Tornado Notes.

JP

My list hasn't changed significantly since Novermber -


My main usage at the moment is:

. Outlook + ClearContext for email and task management
. OneNote for agendas, drafts and personal storage
. MindManager and Inspiration when I need mindmaps and project diagrams
. Notemap when I need a text-heavy outline (subject to caution about Word export)
. Word & Excel 2003 for standard business reports et al.
. dtSearch for indexing (off a USB)

Dabbling with but not yet integrated into my standard workflow.
. InfoQube
. TreeSheets

Would like to try:
. Personal Brain (expensive)
. ConnectedText (USB version still expensive)

Am still waiting on Brainstorm developments.

Jack

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

but also easy to read --and editable;
does Gmail give you the ability to edit a message in your Inbox? I guess not.

It does not and that is annoying. Outlook will allow it but if you don't do a decent job of annotating the page before you send it to gmail, there's no way to edit it. Point well taken. Jonnathan also mentioned above that Evernote allows sorting and I'm sure it allows placement of items in a certain order, something gmail does a poor job of so that's another good point.

I will consider giving Evernote a try.

Thanks,
Tom