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Posted by Daly de Gagne
Aug 31, 2009 at 04:34 AM
The reviews provided by Steve and others of Mac outliners and information programs was very helpful.
I am much taken by Scrivener, and it appears inexpensive enough that it is no real risk, if it is even half as good as Hugh, Steve, and others say.
Just spent some time checking out OmniOutline. It appears to me as perhaps the most general of the outline tools - the Swiss army knife, say, allowing for information linking and management, but with the main focus being on outline capabilities and variety, largely supported by the columnar structure.
If that is a correct assessment I am thinking it might be a good choice as well - perhaps leaving other programs such as DEVONthink, Curio, Yojimbo, etc. until I am more familiar with the Mac environment, it having changed much in the seven years I have been away from it.
I still remember Attain’s INControl, which was my first real experience with an outliner that offered columns; my first Mac outliner was MORE, but it was the approach of INControl that won me.
In the PC world I never really found something comparable, with the exception of ADM. My experience with INControl influenced many of the suggestions I made to Eric, and in fact I photocopied and sent him documentation on INControl.
MyInfo has done a good job of developing columns, but to mind still falls short and, though I may be a little unfair to the developer, who is a truly nice and responsive guy, I find the overall vision somewhat lacking.
UltraRecall has a really convoluted - to my way of thinking - of getting to the same place, though Kinook has done a good job nonetheless. My gut feel - realizing I know next to nothing about programming - is that K may have relied too heavily on off-the-rack sub-programs to put UR together. I never had that feel with ADM, which seemed to me to be a built from the ground up, built from scratch creation.
Having said all that when I review OmniOutline’s web site, my sense is that what turned me on to INControl in the first place, and caused me to appreciate ADM, has been allowed to evolve and grow so that it becomes a workable, yet elegant, program.
I’m not sure if this line of thought makes sense.
AND, with OmniOutline and Scrivener would I still need a program for capturing information from the web and elsewhere the way that Evernote and Surfulater do?
If so, would that be more the role of DEVONthink or Curio?
And then there’s the hardware: Desktop or laptop?
I prefer the protability of a laptop, and have recently realized that a 13 inch screening isn’t all the limiting, and that the advantage is greater protability.
Vanilla plastic MacBook or MacBook Pro?
Is 2 G of ram sufficient?
Is 2.26 GH sufficiently fast for most of the surfing, researching, writing things I want to do?
For work at home, how practical is it to have a MacBook power a 24 inch monitor (now selling for about $250 Canadian?
Lots of questions that go beyond the forum’s central outliner focus - yet all related to allowing me to do the stuff that is my main focus now: research and writing.
And one last question, how well does Windows operate on a MacBook? I have heard conflicting reports.
Thanks for your patience with all my questions and rambling opinions.
Daly
Posted by David Dunham
Aug 31, 2009 at 05:23 AM
Daly de Gagne wrote:
>And then there’s the hardware: Desktop or laptop?
I’m typing this on a MacBook Air, with a Dell portrait display attached.
>Vanilla plastic MacBook or MacBook Pro?
For what it’s worth, I have a used first generation MacBook Air I want to sell. (I’m still waffling over whether it’s worth the risk using eBay.)
>Is 2 G of ram sufficient?
For most things. Maybe not for running big Mac apps next to big Windows apps. For the stuff you mention next, definitely.
>Is 2.26 GH sufficiently fast for most of the surfing, researching,
>writing things I want to do?
Definitely—the 1.8 GHz MacBook Air I’m selling was fast enough for surfing and researching. I wanted something a little faster as a software developer.
>For work at home, how practical is it to have a MacBook
>power a 24 inch monitor (now selling for about $250 Canadian?
The monitor I’m driving is 1024x1280 pixels. I’d have to look up what the original MBA does (I used it with this monitor), but the weakest MacBook now available does 1920x1200 (or presumably 1200x1920).
>Lots of questions that
>go beyond the forum’s central outliner focus - yet all related to allowing me to do the
>stuff that is my main focus now: research and writing.
Yes, but you’ll be using Opal on it, right, so it’s totally related. (As always, forum members can contact me for an Opal discount.)
>And one last question, how
>well does Windows operate on a MacBook? I have heard conflicting reports.
Some say better. My developer says he will never buy a Windows machine again. (I like using the 2-finger trackpad gestures when I boot into Windows. But I don’t boot into Windows often enough to know about any problems.)
Posted by Hugh
Aug 31, 2009 at 12:00 PM
Daly
To deal with the (only, I think) one of your questions David didn’t cover: will you need an application like Surfulator to clip material from the web? Well, no and yes…
One of the features of the Mac platform that as far as I know has no real equivalent on Windows (though my experience of Vista is sketchy and 7 non-existent) is the `Services menu that is added to every application and which essentially allows text and/or images to be clipped from anywhere in the universe and transferred to most places on your computer. (There are also launchers such as Launchbar and Butler available - equivalent to Launchy, I think - which make this process even easier.) So clipping isn’t the issue.
The question is storage. As Steve Z. said in the other thread, DevonThink is the heavyweight data/manager, info-dump here, with Together and Eaglefiler as the simpler possibilities. There are also several others of varying power. I wouldn’t bother with Yojimbo, whose development has fallen behind as Steve also said. Curio is a hybrid, as concerned with expression and depiction, but it also conveniently provides quite a good level of storage (or material can be easily moved or copied to it from the more specialised data-stores).
HTH
H
P.S. Omni products get a whole-number upgrade every year or so. OmniOutliner is likely shortly to go to version 4.0 I think, and my (completely uninformed) guess is that this upgrade will add clones, the most obvious hole in its armoury at the moment.
Posted by Tom S.
Aug 31, 2009 at 01:28 PM
Daly de Gagne wrote:
>Vanilla plastic MacBook or MacBook Pro?
>
>Is 2 G of ram
>sufficient?
>
>Is 2.26 GH sufficiently fast for most of the surfing, researching,
>writing things I want to do?
I have the MacBook and have found the processer and memory to be more than sufficient (I don’t have it up at the moment but I may well have increased the memory to 4 Gig. Its the type of thing I usually don’t skimp on no matter what anyone tells me.). Despite the features and the fancy graphics, the Mac OS seems to be substantially lighter in weight compared to Windows, especially Vista.
The only limitation for me was the MacBook’s small screen. You have stated that doesn’t bother you. In addition, the Mac has configurable virtual desktops of the type which those of us who use Unix are familiar. This effectively increases the screen space.
>And one last question, how
>well does Windows operate on a MacBook? I have heard conflicting reports.
I use Sun’s Virtualbox virtual machine (free) on mine. No problems whatsoever. I have heard good things about Parallels but have not tried it. No idea on Boot Camp.
Cheers,
Tom S.
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Aug 31, 2009 at 03:15 PM
Dave, thanks so much for your reply. It was helpful.
Daly