Recommendation for tablet

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Posted by TonyJ
Dec 26, 2007 at 07:45 PM

My tablet came with OneNote, so far it looks like a good piece of software. Do I need a combination of programs to do it all, or is OneNote sufficient? Here’s what I’d like to be able to do:

1 - Annotate ebooks, preferably in ink. Mostly .pdf or .djvu. Perhaps other formats in the future. Link from a given paragraph of one document to a selected paragraph of another. I think OneNote can handle this.

2 - Store all my email. My email is on an IMAP server. An offline backup where I can link emails to a list of contacts and tasks (and link them back to the emails) is ideal. ON - not as far as I can tell.

3 - As implied in 2, keep a master list of contacts, and manage my projects and to-do lists with a calendar. A good fit with GTD would be ideal but it isn’t necessary. ON - ?

4 - Accurately save web pages. Saving the entire site isn’t necessary but Web Research’s feature of allowing the user to save some of the pages linked to is very nice. An editor where I can cut chunks out of the webpage and eliminate animations, banners and ads would be a strong feature. Ability to export as an html or mht file is a plus. ON can import them as a screen capture but my preference is for the links to work. Linking to a specific section in the web page from an external document is another plus. ON - ?

5 - General note taking. ON does this very well.

6 - The more easily I can use ink, the better.

Linking documents and annotating in ink are the two big wants, but none of this is written in stone. All the linking between different types of documents (email, .pdf, .doc, .jpg, etc.) suggests one database to hold the whole thing. UltraRecall and InfoSelect are getting my attention. Web Research also has some strong features but I don’t know if it can handle a big database and I expect some of these OneNote files holding printed text books, will be rather large. What about SQL Notes? I hear that scrapbook is a free way to save webpages. Are they saved as html? If I used scrapbook is there a good, maybe even free, database for organizing and annotating them, which I can then link to the ON pages?

OK, that’s a lot of questions. Thank you for your thoughts.

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Dec 27, 2007 at 06:58 PM

Tony,

Seems like no one can answer your request—probably because you’re asking too much. I don’t know any program that does all this. I’ve added a few suggestions among your questions below:

TonyJ wrote:
>My tablet came with OneNote, so far it looks like a good piece of software. Do I need a
>combination of programs to do it all, or is OneNote sufficient? Here’s what I’d like to
>be able to do:
> >1 - Annotate ebooks, preferably in ink. Mostly .pdf or .djvu. Perhaps
>other formats in the future. Link from a given paragraph of one document to a selected
>paragraph of another. I think OneNote can handle this.

I’d say ON is the best bet.

>
>2 - Store all my email. My
>email is on an IMAP server. An offline backup where I can link emails to a list of
>contacts and tasks (and link them back to the emails) is ideal. ON - not as far as I can
>tell.
> >3 - As implied in 2, keep a master list of contacts, and manage my projects and
>to-do lists with a calendar. A good fit with GTD would be ideal but it isn’t necessary.
>ON - ?

Take a look at Debrief Notes. (http://www.debriefnotes.com) It tooks a little bit of work to figure out the GUI but once you do it makes sense and is pretty powerful.

>
>4 - Accurately save web pages. Saving the entire site isn’t necessary but Web
>Research’s feature of allowing the user to save some of the pages linked to is very
>nice. An editor where I can cut chunks out of the webpage and eliminate animations,
>banners and ads would be a strong feature. Ability to export as an html or mht file is a
>plus. ON can import them as a screen capture but my preference is for the links to work.
>Linking to a specific section in the web page from an external document is another
>plus. ON - ?

Many people like Surfulater for this task. (http://www.surfulater.com)

>
>5 - General note taking. ON does this very well.
> >6 - The more easily I can
>use ink, the better.

Debrief does ink, but I haven’t tried it.

>
>Linking documents and annotating in ink are the two big wants,
>but none of this is written in stone. All the linking between different types of
>documents (email, .pdf, .doc, .jpg, etc.) suggests one database to hold the whole
>thing. UltraRecall and InfoSelect are getting my attention. Web Research also has
>some strong features but I don’t know if it can handle a big database and I expect some of
>these OneNote files holding printed text books, will be rather large. What about SQL
>Notes? I hear that scrapbook is a free way to save webpages. Are they saved as html? If I
>used scrapbook is there a good, maybe even free, database for organizing and
>annotating them, which I can then link to the ON pages?
> >OK, that’s a lot of questions.
>Thank you for your thoughts.

Posted by TonyJ
Dec 29, 2007 at 01:22 AM

Stephen,

Thank you for your response. Like many of the forum members here, I am a bit fascinated with this genre of software. I’ve been looking for something along these lines for quite a while. There is probably no perfect match but it’s easy to imagine there is, as a number of them come close in slightly different ways.

MyBase has recently caught my eye with its combination of accurate Web capture, stable database and the ability to hold a range of file types. Tablet integration, better handing of email and being able to use FoxIt in the internal browser are preferred, and so it goes.

Both it and Ultra Recall are getting a good look.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Posted by Cassius
Dec 29, 2007 at 04:10 AM

Tony,

I use MyBase+WebCollect and am quite happy with it. Occasionally it will crash when I try to edit some saved Web Pages.

You might also want to look at WebResearch Pro (http://www.macropool.com/en/products/webresearch/professional/index.html ).

WRP can save some Web pages that MBWC cannot, but it lacks many features that MBWC has. MBWC includes indexed searches. For WRP indexing, you have to buy an additional program.

A few months ago, there was an extensive discussion about these programs & Surfulater. If you do an advanced Google search for all the words “MyBase, WebResearch, Surfulater” you should be able to find the discussion thread that compares them.

-c

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