Franz,

I've heard good reports of Sophos. I have Norton, for personal, historical reasons. Other Mac users, I know, continue to use nothing - on the basis that the risks, probably lower than those for Windows, are outweighed by the additional burden placed on the processor and its speed. I've always used Windows anti-virus when running Windows on a Mac; I've heard that complications can sometimes arise if both Windows and Mac anti-virus software are running at the same time.

H

I've been using a package called Intego Mac Security for a while. Actually I think I have the Pro version. The software is here: http://www.intego.com/ It has been working well for me. When I first got it I ran a scan and it found a few things. Those got deleted, and my Mac has been clean ever since. The software runs in the background, and once a day it runs a full scan of my hard drive.

Jim

On NoteSuite: I have, I (quite) like. It's easy to put stuff in folders. On the Mac, just hovering over a page in the navigation bar causes a folder icon to appear. If you tap/click it, you're asked which folder you'd like to move the page into (you can create more folders on the fly). On the iPad, the process is a little more convoluted - you create the folders you want by tapping the 'Folders' button at the top of the left-hand navigation bar. You then go to the bottom of the navigation bar and tap the three dots (to the right of 'Title'); this puts you into 'Edit' mode, whereupon selection checkboxes appear next to each page/file, and the button bar changes to 'Delete', 'Edit' and 'Place'. The one you want is 'Place', which brings up a dialog box showing all your newly created folders. Ta-da! The Mac software is definitely more straightforward... ;-)

Probably the most impressive aspect of NoteSuite is the exceptionally good search function - very quick, and like Acrobat, gives you hits within a document. You have to use it twice (first to isolate the files with the word you want, second to find the word in a selected file), but it's fast. But this is on the iPad - weirdly enough, the desktop version doesn't have as much functionality in this respect; the 'all notes' search function will find the same pages, for example (including web pages), but the 'Search in this note' function doesn't work on web pages, whereas it does on the iPad. Somewhat surprising.

On the iPad, I love the way it offers to import web pages copied to the clipboard for you. On the desktop, it installs a web clipper in Safari (works better than OneNote's rather irritating web page screenshots, but doesn't always preserve formatting very well. The web page formatting king is still Notebooks), and you also have the option of installing a menu bar item. So: bit of a mixed bag.

Timely discussion. My subscription for Intego just came up for automatic renewal. My subscription costs me $39.95 per year, and I am eligible for updating to the most recent version at any time. I am not running the Pro version, I am running what is essentially the home version. It does a good job of scanning. When you first set it up it will do a scan of your computer, either a Quick Scan or a Full Scan. I generally do a Full Scan. It can take a while. After that you can schedule full scans using a scheduler, and also set it up to do real time scans. As I said, it seems to work well. The virus definitions are updated regularly, and the software automatically downloads them. I find it easy to use, and less intrusive than some of the other programs out there. I also don't mind paying $39.95 per year. That is a pretty small price to pay for reasonable security.

Jim

Thanks for the info. As I said, I love Notesuite other than the fact that I couldn't figure out how to do the organization. Now I am going to give this a try.

Jim.

Regarding Notesuite:

What options does it offer to sync between two Macs and between Macs and iOS devices? Only iCloud or Dropbox and Webdav, too?

I heard mixed comments regarding the stability of Notesuite. How does it fare when used regularly?

Lastly, I seem to recall that it might have a function to pull up notes with similar content, somewhat similar to Devonthink's "See also" feature. Is that my imagination playing tricks on me or does this feature exist?

Thanks!
Prion

It used to have that feature, but the developer removed it about a year ago, as it was making the app too sluggish, apparently. It was a nice feature that even included automatic keyword linking in the text.

Prion wrote:

Regarding Notesuite:

Lastly, I seem to recall that it might have a function to pull up notes
with similar content, somewhat similar to Devonthink's "See also"
feature. Is that my imagination playing tricks on me or does this
feature exist?

Thanks!
Prion

Ah, that was a brilliant feature – made NoteSuite quite exceptional, in my view. It's a real shame it's gone.

As for stability: NoteSuite is pretty stable, in my experience, and if it does get its knickers in a knot, it doesn't usually lose anything. But I'm not a massively heavy user. The sheer convenience of the 'Print to Growly Notes' service has won me over... and the CRIMPer in me is dribbling gently over the 'Save to Curio Scrapbook' option, too. Oh dear. No, I mustn't buy Curio! Bad! No! Never! Aaaaaaaaargh...

Cheers,
Bill