I have two concerns: the software, and the forum. The forum - http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/InfoSelect/ - was last posted to on 23 July, 2012. Many discussions were about leaving for Evernote. I applied/registered, as one must do so in order to be accepted by the list owner. However, it has been several days, and I have heard nothing. So: is there another Info Select group, preferably one with living members?

I had IS 3, a long time ago, and loved it. (I still have the disk.) I now need IS again for organizational purposes. I will probably only need the basic features, with which to create, save, and organize, zillions of pieces of information and data. IS 10 has bad reviews from users, so no thanks. This brings question #2: what is the oldest version of IS which can be run on Windows 7 64-bit? Officially, IS 2007 – which I take it is version 9 – can run on it, but “full functionality is not guaranteed.” OK, I'm sure I could live with that. So, is there anything earlier which will run on that OS?

And finally, if there is any competing software which has a tree structure and search structure exactly (or nearly) the same as IS? I know there are all kinds of organizers, outliners, and PIMs, but I don't know them. If IS's tree and search features are duplicated by another software, I will take a look. Otherwise, I will probably live with the oldest version of IS which will run on my laptop OS.

Thanks very much to anyone who can address any of my questions.

I recently tried running IS 8 on my Windows 7 machine, but it didn't work very well. I can't remember exactly what didn't work properly, however.

There seems to be an endless stream of tree-based note taking info managers out there.

The one that seems closest to Info Select is NoteFrog. From memory the authors said that they were inspired by the old DOS versions of Tornado and IS. I didn't particularly like the interface which seemed pretty primitive. It has been developed further but I haven't put it through its paces recently.

Jack

@razorboy: Just some hasty notes. Not sure whether this might help, but here it is in case there is something useful to you from my experience - some of which may be common with yours.
I was a Lotus Agenda user since 1990. I have been an InfoSelect user since 1997.
I still very occasionally use Agenda(!), and I regularly use InfoSelect 8, and the latter runs just fine on a Win 7-64 laptop (Home Premium).
I also subscribe to the Yahoo IS User Group you mention, and have noticed that it has started to look pretty moribund. The IS developer (who took over the Admin/Manager role for it) seemed to have a Cavalier approach and scant regard for users' needs, and this has apparently upset some users, who were saying they were looking to emigrate to Evernote. I don't know how many may have made the switch. I had already been investigating Evernote by then anyway.
.
A query in a discussion in that group, about IS5, led me to reinstall my old copy of IS5 as an experiment, to prove that it too works just fine on a Win 7-64 laptop (Home Premium). I reported on that to the User Group.

Though it feels like I have trialled (and still trial) almost every PIM out there, I have not yet come across any other hierarchical 2-pane PIM (Personal Information Manager) that is quite as well-designed, consistently stable and useful as IS8. It is very good at what it does. Later versions that tried looked pretty hopeless by comparison, and I did not consider them worth the investment - so I have stayed with IS8.
I also use NoteFrog (and before that, its predecessor Clip Guru), and have been a ß tester for it. It is an excellent Clipboard Information Manager, but it is not designed to be a PIM like IS8. It is NOT hierarchical, by the way.

A couple of years back, I started to use and compare Evernote and Microsoft OneNote. I have since settled for OneNote, since the OneNote database allows me to store ALL my data - including image data with any text in it, and the spoken/sung audio data (Yes!) - and index/search through it all (OCR for the image data), with the database being on a local hard drive. This all suits my peculiar needs, though it might not suit other peoples' needs.

Incidentally, for a while now, I have been trialling Jello - which Integrates with Outlook, which integrates with OneNote. The possibilities seem endless, but I am just exploring.

Thanks to all for those replies. There are helpful.

Slartibartfarst, thanks for the generous response. I contacted Info Select support, and they claim to have no idea who owns the user Group.

Your response generates some more questions, if you don't mind.....

~~~~Later versions that tried looked pretty hopeless by comparison,...~~~~ So, you tried IS 9 (2007) and 10, and found them inferior to IS 8? IS 10 has really bad user reviews, I see.

~~~~...led me to reinstall my old copy of IS5 as an experiment, to prove that it too works just fine on a Win 7-64 laptop (Home Premium).~~~~ How did you do that? Did the installer do its job, or did you have to resort to hackery?

~~~~and the spoken/sung audio data (Yes!)~~~~ That is of some interest to me as well, for making musical & spoken notes (no pun) although it might not be a deciding factor. (I don't want to have to fire up Studio One every time I get an idea.) Do IS 9 and 10 not save audio (note) files? Does Evernote? I downloaded the trial of AllMyNotes, and the tree and search function are pretty good; however, it does not yet save audio.

~~~~It is NOT hierarchical, by the way.~~~~~ I confess that I don't know what It is meant by “hierarchical” in the context of describing these softwares. Please explain. (..blush..)

Thanks again.

I remember now what it was that made me abandon the experiment to work with IS 8 again... It asked me to enter my registration code every time I ran it. There's probably a fix, but I didn't have the patience to figure it out.

When you install the program do not accept the default directory, place it in c:\apps\ Win7 does not allow writing to the c:\Program Files\ directory. This will solve most problems (including asking for your 'key').

Have installed many programs not written for Win7 (or Vista) into c:\apps or d:\apps to get around the 'you can not write or update information here'.

As always, your milage may vary.

@razorboy:
1. So, you tried IS 9 (2007) and 10, and found them inferior to IS 8? IS 10 has really bad user reviews, I see.
Yes, I couldn't see that IS9 was necessarily any better than IS8 - at least, not from my perspective. I don't have any notes written up about it, but I recall that I thought IS9 seemed a bit of a regressive step. I very briefly played about with an earlier prototype version (I think it was) of IS10, when the IS/Yahoo forum was active (but again, no notes, sorry, though I did put my thoughts into the forum thread and you presumably can still read that material).
I couldn't see the need for half the changes that were made/proposed for IS10, a good many of which seemed to be removal of previously otherwise stable functionality. Then there was the introduction of the feature of the "ribbon" interface.

The developer (and the forum users/members) seemed to be fixated on features (e.g., "ribbon" interface) rather than whether the functionality met their needs. Neglecting NEEDS is usually a classic error in software design/development, so if IS10 got any bad reviews (and it definitely did), then it's arguably because of that rather than that IS10 is a "bad product" per se.
The needs never were defined (to my knowledge) and the classic step of prioritising them into A, B, C (A=mandatory, B=highly desirable, C= nice-to-have) seemed to have been omitted throughout. The whole exercise thus seemed appallingly confused and almost purposeless, and it was apparently being driven this way by the developer (go figure). Sadly, in restrospect, it seemed to have been an exercise in missed opportunity to improve the design in line with users' needs.

I don't think the IS10 developer produces "bad product" per se - at least, not from my experience. Even an egregiously bad design can be made operational, but that won't necessarily make the design any better - e.g., the Maginot Line.
______________________________

2. ...led me to reinstall my old copy of IS5 as an experiment, to prove that it too works just fine on a Win 7-64 laptop (Home Premium).~~~~ How did you do that? Did the installer do its job, or did you have to resort to hackery?

It was no problem at all - piece of cake. As with all my trial or old software, I deliberately install the software into a special directory of my own choosing and thus avoid installing the software into the Windows "Program Files" or "Program Files (x86)" directories - thus bypassing the need for extra system privileges that the OS puts on proggies using those directories. The only difficulty I recall was in ensuring I had the appropriate InfoSelect v5 (and later) English spelling and thesaurus files. I also have the IS database in a specially defined data area (for targetting of backups).
______________________________

3. Do IS 9 and 10 not save audio (note) files? Does Evernote?
I don't know of any other PIM that handles words spoken/sung in audio files as text data AND that handles text embedded in images as text data. Furthermore, the smooth and uncluttered way in which OneNote does this is amazing. I only discovered a few days ago that if you put an mp3 song in OneNote, and paste the text of the lyrics below it, then when you play the mp3 in OneNote, it automatically tries to step down through and highlight the lines of the lyrics as they are being sung. That's pretty smart. Of course, being able to search through the words in an audio file when you have no transcript is also pretty damn smart, and arguably just what you'd need in a note-taking PIM tool.
I think that in this regard OneNote leaves Evernote in the dust. Evernote would not be so far behind OneNote if they hadn't crippled their client application so that you couldn't have an OCR store of your text images - you are locked-in to being dependent on the cloud-based store for this. I detest such archaic business models that use lock-in in any shape or form.
______________________________

4. I confess that I don’t know what It is meant by “hierarchical” in the context of describing these softwares. Please explain. (..blush..)
A flexible hierarchical categorisation tree is an immensely powerful tool for organising information into categories and for marshalling and communicating your thoughts on a complex subject - e.g., in writing a book or a report in sections and subsections, on a particular subject.

For IS8, imagine a diagram of a structured set of categories and sub-categories - e.g., an organisational hierarchy diagram - then turn it on its side, and what you have is a linear view of that in the LH pane of IS8 (the categories can be anything you want, and there is a way of mapping unstructured cross-categories too, which can be rather handy). The RH pane contains the relevant content material for each point in the hierarchy.

EXAMPLE:
1.0 Parent (e.g. CEO)
1.1 Child of the above parent. (e.g., Vice President #1)
1.2 Child that is a parent (e.g., Vice President #2)
1.2.1 Child of 1.2 (e.g., 1st Deputy Vice President to #2)
1.2.2 Child of 1.2 (e.g., 2nd Deputy Vice President to #2)
1.2.2.1 Child of 1.2.2
2.0 Another parent - etc.
______________________________

@razorboy states above:
Aug 26, 2012 at 05:50 PM
...I contacted Info Select support, and they claim to have no idea who owns the user Group...
_______________________

That seems rather odd. Maybe he (President/CEO of Micro Logic and eMachineShop) has abandoned/resigned the role? He did seem to be given a pretty hard time of things by some users.
Just for the record, he certainly announced his taking over ownership of the moderation of the InfoSelect User Group forum in a forum post here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/InfoSelect/message/4604
- where he wrote:

_______________________

Greetings
Posted By: jimdlewis
Sun Sep 20, 2009 11:02 pm

Hi All

With the upcoming release of the long awaited Info Select 10, Micro Logic is
pleased to take over moderation of this forum.

As before, this forum will continue to be user-driven and communication with
Micro Logic will be through the channels provided on the web site.

Many of you have been with Micro Logic since the early days of Tornado Notes way
back in the stone ages of 1986! We appreciate that continuity and, of course, we
appreciate even the newest owners of Info Select joining the amazing 23 years of
longevity all of you have provided to Micro Logic and Info Select.

Our programmers have been working hard on Info Select 10 - essentially a rewrite
of Info Select including a more modern UI. We look forward to your comments
through the miclog web site.

As always, though it may seem otherwise, we continually track, prioritize and
address as many fixes and features as we can, given the finite manpower that
companies of all sizes are constrained by. It is an unusual property of software
that the more a publisher adds to a program, the more is found to be missing;
the more useful a program is, the more holes are found. If you have been waiting
for a fix or feature, perhaps it will be addressed in version 10. If not, please
let us know and find a work-around until we get to it.

Once again, if you have any questions or comments, please address them through
the web site communication channels.

Jim Lewis
President
Micro Logic
_________________________________

Recommending a PIM would be much easier and more accurate if you would specify your precise requirements rather than the vague "like InfoSelect."

Slartibartfarst wrote:

@razorboy states above:
Aug 26, 2012 at 05:50 PM
...I contacted Info Select
support, and they claim to have no idea who owns the user
Group...
_______________________

That seems rather odd. Maybe he
(President/CEO of Micro Logic and eMachineShop) has abandoned/resigned the role?
He did seem to be given a pretty hard time of things by some users.
Just for the record,
he certainly announced his taking over ownership of the moderation of the InfoSelect
User Group forum in a forum post
here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/InfoSelect/message/4604
- where
he wrote:
_______________________

>>>He did seem to be given a pretty hard time of things by some users.

Arnold wrote:

When you install the program do not accept the default directory, place it in c:\apps\
Win7 does not allow writing to the c:\Program Files\ directory. This will solve most
problems (including asking for your 'key').

Have installed many programs not
written for Win7 (or Vista) into c:\apps or d:\apps to get around the 'you can not write
or update information here'.

As always, your milage may vary.

Arnold, I take it that the installation of Version 10 does not require any such hackery, and that the default directories are fine as is. Yes?
Thank you.

[b]@ razorboy:[/b]
As regards installing is8, is9 (called "2007"), and is10, you can install them either in the default directory or wherever else you might want them to go. As I wrote above:
______________
[quote]As with all my trial or old software, I deliberately install the software into a special directory of my own choosing and thus avoid installing the software into the Windows “Program Files” or “Program Files (x86)” directories - thus bypassing the need for extra system privileges that the OS puts on proggies using those directories. The only difficulty I recall was in ensuring I had the appropriate InfoSelect v5 (and later) English spelling and thesaurus files. I also have the IS database in a specially defined data area (for targetting of backups).[/quote]
([b]@Arnold[/b] said something similar, above.)
______________
As a result of responding to this discussion that you started, I have reinstalled and tested is9 (called "2007"), and is10 (the latest version is v10.00.87).
I put them both into my trial directory, running .concurrently with is8 (which was already installed).
I am currently putting is10 through its hoops, and so far it is looking quite good, though it kept crashing when I tried to install it with my old .wd2 is8 database files, so I figured out how to install it first and THEN convert the .wd2 files. It's a bit tedious that way, but as a workaround it seems to be OK.

I had not trialled this version of is10 before, and I must say it looks quite good! If it enables me to easily save my browser .html pages (I currently have these in a Scrapbook library), then I might consider using it for that, though it seems expensive so I am hoping I shall find more befits than just that. Otherwise I will not be able to easily justify the outlay. I am already doing what data management/manipulation I want with OneNote and separate tools and FREE Firefox browser add-ons. At worst, is10 may not offer much extra, but at best, it could offer a degree of increased consolidation of functionality - which is always a good thing IMHO.

I would recommend you download is10 free of charge as a trial, and that will apparently give you 60 runs (that is what it states) before the trial licence expires. You should be able to get some idea of how useful it is from that.
WARNING: Though the is8 and is9 Help files were self-contained and very well-documented, there is apparently only an online Help facility for is10. I have tried using it and it unfortunately seems like rubbish. I presume that they are still writing a proper one! It badly needs one anyway - and especially for the price they are asking.

You can download the various versions of "is" from here: http://www.miclog.com/download/index.htm

razorboy wrote:

Arnold, I take it that the
installation of Version 10 does not require any such hackery, and that the default
directories are fine as is. Yes?
Thank you.

Never 'upgraded' to v10, did not like the changes and ribbon bar so voted with my non-purchase (and email to support as to reason).

Arnold wrote:

Never 'upgraded' to v10, did not like the changes and ribbon bar so
voted with my non-purchase (and email to support as to reason).

Thank, Arnold.

Slartibartfarst wrote:

As a result of responding to this
discussion that you started, I have reinstalled and tested is9 (called "2007"), and
is10 (the latest version is v10.00.87).
I put them both into my trial directory,
running .concurrently with is8 (which was already installed).
I am currently
putting is10 through its hoops, and so far it is looking quite good, though it kept
crashing when I tried to install it with my old .wd2 is8 database files, so I figured out
how to install it first and THEN convert the .wd2 files. It's a bit tedious that way, but
as a workaround it seems to be OK.

I had not trialled this version of is10 before, and I
must say it looks quite good! If it enables me to easily save my browser .html pages (I
currently have these in a Scrapbook library), then I might consider using it for that,
though it seems expensive so I am hoping I shall find more befits than just that.
Otherwise I will not be able to easily justify the outlay. I am already doing what data
management/manipulation I want with OneNote and separate tools and FREE Firefox
browser add-ons. At worst, is10 may not offer much extra, but at best, it could offer a
degree of increased consolidation of functionality - which is always a good thing
IMHO.

I would recommend you download is10 free of charge as a trial, and that will
apparently give you 60 runs (that is what it states) before the trial licence expires.
You should be able to get some idea of how useful it is from that.
WARNING: Though the
is8 and is9 Help files were self-contained and very well-documented, there is
apparently only an online Help facility for is10. I have tried using it and it
unfortunately seems like rubbish. I presume that they are still writing a proper one!
It badly needs one anyway - and especially for the price they are asking.

You can
download the various versions of "is" from here:
http://www.miclog.com/download/index.htm

Thanks for all your work, Slartibartfarst. I will do the IS 10 trial, although I'm not sure what a "run" is. (Open and close the programme?) I qualify for the upgrade price, and it is worth that much $$$ to me if it works for me as well as the ancient version did. Perhaps there is some way to minimize the effect of the ribbon, although it does not sound promising in that regard.

I emailed support about the forum, copying your post about Jim Lewis taking over the forum, and I suggested that he must have turned the thing over to someone else. I have had no response. I don't think I'll get one. BTW, their street address is an industrial mall with several businesses in it, none of which is Micro Logic, it seems. Of course, half the software companies in the world exist only on someone's desktop computer, with employees working from home and having four such jobs each. As well, the info about the address could be wrong.

I have used Tornado in the early 90s, and bought every upgrade of Infoselect since. When vista was foisted on us, I went over to apple and bought Macintoshes, lots of Macintoshes. In the Apple universe I found Devonthink which is as good or better than Infoselect 8. Later versions of infoselect just got too cludgey like a giant Swish army knife with 10000000000 attachements and it also had the worlds worst email. I still could not figure out why Infoselect wanted to put email inside their programme when there Outlook or Mozilla. Anyhow, at some stage I realised that whereas Microsoft was the evil empire, Apple was the evile Galactic overlord from hell. You even had to have apple hardware to run their OP and apps. (I know there are hackintoshes but blah). So when mountain Lion came out and being in apple was like being in Alkatraz but without the freedom I went back to Microsoft and bought computers for me and my neurogastroentrology labs, lots and lots of PCs. I discovered something nice, Windows 7 was just as good as Leopard or Lion but more open and the world felt a little less constrained. But then I had to move stuff from Devonthink into Infoselect 10. Infoselect (after 8) and with its insane email is only for the most determined masochists.
So, I looked around for a program that lets me do what Devonthink does, including indexing external files without importing them yet they can be searched for and edited. Also it had to talk in OPML since there are few outliner intelligent (that means opml and why most windows (single or more paned) outliners aren't)) programmes in windows. Also it had to be able to edit its own intenal files (as well as the external linked files) in a text editor of my choice. I chose ms word 2010 because, like most professionals I dictate my content and dragon naturally speaking 12 works beautifully with word. The whole shebang (word, dragon anything else) is run from this outliner. As well I needed to index thousands (8k or so) of pubmed indexed pdf and they should not be imported but searchable from inside the outliner database. So this programme was better than Devonthink on the mac and better than anything else in the windows world. I love it and use it every day.

Ahm, Wolfgang.

Wolfgang wrote:

So, I looked around for a program that lets me do what Devonthink does,
including ...
... So this
programme was better than Devonthink on the mac and better than anything else in the
windows world. I love it and use it every day.

And the winner is?
What program are you talking about? Infoselect 10? Word 2010? Or ...?

Beste Grüße, Franz

Yes Wolfgang, for goodness' sake do tell us. The suspense is killing me.

I am sorry, I thought I mentioned it. I have before on this forum. It is, of course Ultra Recall. I had downloaded it many times over the years even before I went Apple and it somehow seemed too complicated and never clicked. The in desperation with Infoselect having committed hari curry (or whatever) I googled and looked and ruminated and downloaded and paid for it. I had several goes at it and it still didn't click but I was desperate and the ability to index files actually worked. I tried that wiki thingy that is so highly reviewed here but I couldn't find a way to index external files and it never clicked either. The I had to write an NIH grant application and I used Ultra Recall in only the simplest mode. And then, biff, if clicked and now I use it all the time. I also play with and use OneNote but somehow it doesn't do it for me totally (poor integration with ms word no indexing .... but it is very pretty). Sometimes Ultra R is slow to copy web pages to itself but anyway I mainly use it for text. I use attributes to keep endnote reference as well for text snippets. If I copy from pdf to make a text snippit the text can be edited in word (if UR is set up to do it - info in discussions on forums) and I use an ms word addin found on http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/index.html at
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.html this person is amazing and with lots of word addins and templates. Then after editing in word it saves back to UR and the text is pretty and the hard returns from the pdf are gone. Overall despite occasional slowness, I rate UR 10/10 and it can handle ginormous databases. I bought the latest version with runs on win 8 but I think I will wait a bit before going to 8.
w

Oh. Wot an anti-climax.
Never mind. URpro is OK, but it doesn't meet my needs.

Franz Grieser wrote:

And the winner is?
What program are you talking about?
Infoselect 10? Word 2010? Or ...?

Beste Grüße, Franz

Thank goodness....... I thought that my comprehension had collapsed........ I read his post about 50 times and still didn't get it.

:

I am doing a trial of IS10, which seems designed by a flock of fruit-bats. I also have a trial of AllMyNotes, which a simple outliner similar to IS. In fact, the developers of AllMyNptes worked on IS for a time.

Wolfgang wrote:

If I copy from pdf to
make a text snippit the text can be edited in word (if UR is set up to do it - info in
discussions on forums) and I use an ms word addin found on
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/index.html at
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/word_tips.html this person is amazing and with lots
of word addins and templates. Then after editing in word it saves back to UR and the text
is pretty and the hard returns from the pdf are gone.

Thanks for this valuable resource. May I ask which specific add-in you use in this case and for what purpose? Some kind of text "cleaning" utility perhaps?

There were two things I liked about InfoSelect: I liked the way the tree was set up and how it operated, and I liked the lightning fast searches. The rest always seemed poorly designed and executed. I was especially appalled by the editor, which provided little extended selection of text during editing. A note manager should first and foremost be a great place to WRITE notes. InfoSelect never was in my opinion. If it had only focused on note-taking and not tried to be everything to everybody, it may have actually been an excellent application.

SZ