Hi,
I am thinking about buying TheBrain only to use its great file management capabilities (mind mapping features, although great too, aren't necessary for my work). I haven't bought it yet, however, because 219 bucks are not in my present budget.
So I'd like to ask for a help from you, more experienced guys. Do you any other similar tool? (I am seeking for it for a long time, and tested many, many ones). Any help would be very appreciated.
(Sorry for my English, as it is not my native language)
Kind regards,
Jorge

Jorge Watanabe wrote:

I am thinking about buying TheBrain only to use its great file
management capabilities (mind mapping features, although great too,
aren't necessary for my work).

hi Jorge, check this list (though it's arguable):
http://alternativeto.net/software/personal-brain/

Freeplane (it's predecessor, Freemind tops the AlternativeTo list) is a cheap (i.e. free) alternative, in terms of being able to drag and drop links into a hierarchy, where you can further organise the nodes, annotate them, and even link them to each other.

Perhaps less obviously, but ConnectedText can also be used for this purpose, with the usual caveats (learning curve, wiki markup etc.). Manfred Kuehn discusses how CT can be used to emulate TheBrain (somewhere on his blog or on the CT forum, I can't remember exactly).

Hi, Jorge,

I don't blame you for not wanting to spend $219 for TheBrain (TB) if you don't have to. However, in my view, you're not going to find a better solution (but I admit to not having a very thorough knowledge of other file manager apps). To help others come up with suggestions, it may be useful to list some of the advantages of using TheBrain as a file manager:

1. Flexible. You can add virtually any type of file to a thought in TB. You can attach multiple files to the same thought or have a different thought for each file. You can embed the file in TB or leave it as a link to an external file. If you embed the file, it becomes fully searchable (at least the most common file types do).

2. Visual. You can indicate how files are related to one another using the link and plex geography. The links can now have labels to further explain the connections. You can add icons -- from the icon collection or from screen clips -- to help you remember or otherwise illustrate what's in the files.

3. Meta-Data. You can include additional information about the files using the notes tool, the type tool, the tagging tool, and even the calendar (add a tickle reminder to do something with a specific file). Include URLs to sources as attachments. Drag a related e-mail note from Outlook as an attachment or a child thought.

4. Find stuff. If you've used the meta data, you can run remarkably sophisticated reports to locate your data. The search function is powerful. Type a string into the search box and a list of thoughts including that phrase in the name appears. Hit enter and the search tool window goes into action, providing a list of thoughts that match your search string, separated by whether the string was found in the title or in the attached file (only if the file is embedded in TB).

5. Ease of use. Drag stuff in, move it around, draw links. It really is easy. Also, you can pin commonly accessed files to the top of the plex, so you can access them quite quickly.

I really can't think of another app that provides that much power for file management, but I hope others are able to suggest alternatives.

Steve Z.

I agree that The Brain is quite useful in this regard, but for what you want (and your budget), I would suggest Ultra Recall. It indexes your files and has a pretty powerful search tool. You can link easily enough. It can be set up to display meta data on which you can search. Hoisting is there to help navigation without clutter. You can also make notes for your files. Think of UR as The Brain without the attractive visual.

Jon

Dr Andus wrote:

hi Jorge, check this list (though it's arguable):
Freeplane (it's predecessor, Freemind tops the AlternativeTo list)

Perhaps less obviously, but ConnectedText can also be used for this
purpose

Just to clarify, I was suggesting these two for their use as project dashboards (dropping into and keeping project-specific files in one place). Otherwise neither of them are what you'd call a "file manager."

Dr Andus wrote:

Jorge Watanabe wrote:
>I am thinking about buying TheBrain only to use its great file
>management capabilities (mind mapping features, although great too,
>aren't necessary for my work).

hi Jorge, check this list (though it's arguable):
http://alternativeto.net/software/personal-brain/

Freeplane (it's predecessor, Freemind tops the AlternativeTo list) is a
cheap (i.e. free) alternative, in terms of being able to drag and drop
links into a hierarchy, where you can further organise the nodes,
annotate them, and even link them to each other.

Perhaps less obviously, but ConnectedText can also be used for this
purpose, with the usual caveats (learning curve, wiki markup etc.).
Manfred Kuehn discusses how CT can be used to emulate TheBrain
(somewhere on his blog or on the CT forum, I can't remember exactly).

Hi Dr Andus and thank you for your information. I will investigate Freeplane and Connected Text more deeply. By the way, Connected Text is from Brazil (my country). I've tested it some months ago, but then I was not seeking for a file manager, so my evaluation took a different direction. Kind regards

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Hi, Jorge,

I don't blame you for not wanting to spend $219 for TheBrain (TB) if you
don't have to. However, in my view, you're not going to find a better
solution (but I admit to not having a very thorough knowledge of other
file manager apps). To help others come up with suggestions, it may be
useful to list some of the advantages of using TheBrain as a file
manager:

1. Flexible. You can add virtually any type of file to a thought in TB.
You can attach multiple files to the same thought or have a different
thought for each file. You can embed the file in TB or leave it as a
link to an external file. If you embed the file, it becomes fully
searchable (at least the most common file types do).

2. Visual. You can indicate how files are related to one another using
the link and plex geography. The links can now have labels to further
explain the connections. You can add icons -- from the icon collection
or from screen clips -- to help you remember or otherwise illustrate
what's in the files.

3. Meta-Data. You can include additional information about the files
using the notes tool, the type tool, the tagging tool, and even the
calendar (add a tickle reminder to do something with a specific file).
Include URLs to sources as attachments. Drag a related e-mail note from
Outlook as an attachment or a child thought.

4. Find stuff. If you've used the meta data, you can run remarkably
sophisticated reports to locate your data. The search function is
powerful. Type a string into the search box and a list of thoughts
including that phrase in the name appears. Hit enter and the search tool
window goes into action, providing a list of thoughts that match your
search string, separated by whether the string was found in the title or
in the attached file (only if the file is embedded in TB).

5. Ease of use. Drag stuff in, move it around, draw links. It really is
easy. Also, you can pin commonly accessed files to the top of the plex,
so you can access them quite quickly.

I really can't think of another app that provides that much power for
file management, but I hope others are able to suggest alternatives.

Steve Z.

Hi Steve, and thank you. I agree with you. TheBrain is great, almost perfect for my needs -- and expensive. If it was half the price, I would buy it today.

Jon Polish wrote:

I agree that The Brain is quite useful in this regard, but for what you
want (and your budget), I would suggest Ultra Recall. It indexes your
files and has a pretty powerful search tool. You can link easily enough.
It can be set up to display meta data on which you can search. Hoisting
is there to help navigation without clutter. You can also make notes for
your files. Think of UR as The Brain without the attractive visual.

Jon

Hi Jon, and thank you. In fact, I own Ultra Recall 5. I agree that it is useful, and I really tried to use it as file manager. But it does not read files and folders directly from OS; instead, it is necessary to import them. This process is very slow in my case (hours to import or update a single directory). So I quit. TheBrain is very fast in this task. I don't know the technical details, but it seems to read files and folders directly in "real time", smoothly integrating itself to OS and extending Windows capabilities with great features. It is not perfect for my needs, but it is the nearest I've ever found.

I commented on this here:

http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/5217