Beginner needs help

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Posted by halcyon
Aug 10, 2007 at 08:05 PM

Hello all!

I’ve been reading some forum backlog and trying out some programs, but I’ve yet to found what I’m looking for.

I wonder if some of you could point me towards some potential software that I could trial.

I work on Windows (XP, moving to Vista maybe next year).

I read/save/process a lot of stuff from the net:

- web pages (html with css and images)
- PDFs
- .rtf & .doc text documents
- powerpoint and excel files
- audio podcasts (mainly mp3 some .rm) and a few videos (avi, qt and ram mostly)

I use Firefox as my only browser. Office 2007 as my office setup and Adobe reader for PDFs.

To this date I’ve been reading, annotating mentally, keeping separate notes and saving files to a directory hierarchy on my hard drive.

What I’m after is something which would offer as much of the following:

1) Ability to save to HD, attach to mail, print various doc types or parts of them

2) Highlight or mark parts of text of documents with tags/keywords associated with my markings for later retrieval

3) Keep the original documents in their original form (not viewing my highlights), but hopefully with at least an
ability to print out the original documents WITH my highlights

4) Fast searching across/inside above file types

5) Attaching keywords, dates (when saved / highlighted), URL of origin, maybe summary text (free text) to documents

6) Of course: organizing the documents in a hierarchy (collapsing outline)

7) Support for Unicode (I work in a multi-language, multi code page environment)

8) Fast interface (clean, uncluttered, minimal number of mouse clicks, now cumbersome sub-menus after sub-menus, hopefully key shortcuts)

9) Integrates well on a multi-monitor multiple windows on 2 desktops workstyle (i.e. no SDI interfaces which take up the whole screen at once)

I’m really confused as what to try. It feels like there are a million products out there.

It can be free or for-pay.

All I want is a little bit of more organization to my madness, without having to completely change the way I work (I.e. Firefox, multiple windows).

Thanks for all suggestions!

Posted by sracer
Aug 10, 2007 at 10:50 PM

Based on your stated needs, it seems to me that a standalone info organizer is NOT the way to go. The amount of data you gather will most likely exceed the capacity of those apps. And as databases get overly large, the potential for the database to become corrupted or crash grows dramatically.

I suggest some kind of desktop indexer like Google Desktop and simply storing your data on your harddrive. You should also invest in an external USB harddrive and sync/backup software to back that data up. (I use Allway Sync to synchronize my data with an external drive).

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