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Favored "bucket" app - DEVONthink v. Keep-It vs. EagleFiler etc
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Posted by Dellu
Jul 5, 2018 at 10:08 PM
Apart from regular note taking, the main advantage of Devonthink is for storing and searching PDF files.
The reason I want to eliminate Devonthink is because I am using Foxtrot for the same purpose.
I find the Searchin in Devonthink less powerful than Foxtrot. I completely rely on Foxtrot for the searching PDF files. There is no point in indexing these files in Devonthink for me. The proximity search I often use (>80% of my search) is useless in Devonthink. Foxtrot does great here.
But, Foxtrot has also a problem: the developers are suckers. They are updating the software every other year and ask the user to pay a hectic price for a new license. Developers of Devonthink is very generous for the license. We have been using Version 2 for ages without paying a penny.
Posted by JakeBernsteinWA
Jul 5, 2018 at 11:03 PM
Paul Korm wrote:
>The cost is not in the software. The cost is in the hours you spend
>with the software trying to make it work for you. If you don’t know
>what you want to accomplish to begin with, odds are you’ll buy the wrong
>thing because some guy on the internet told you what they like.
So painfully true.
>(Personally, I like DEVONthink and dislike Eagle Filer and Keep It.
>And I’m bored of all of them and wish there were better options. But
>I’ve also learned to use the filesystem better and depend less on
>“bucket” (ugh) software to do my work.)
I use DEVONthink the most and I couldn’t really live without it. I’m an attorney with both a litigation and transactional practice in a paperless office and I would go insane without DTPO. The problem is that DTPO’s “flagship” feature (the Magic Hat) has never really worked for me. Meaning I’m left with an out-of-date looking app that will *hopefully* be updated soon (at least DTTG 2 is coming along well).
I basically own a license for every app mentioned (except TheBrain—tried it, but didn’t like it), so it’s less about cost and more about what works. Thanks for the input, discussion always helps!
Posted by satis
Jul 5, 2018 at 11:54 PM
Dellu wrote:
I had been asking the same question for the last couple of days.
>
>Generally, Devonthink is more potent than EagleFiler. Unless you are up
>to the price, I see no reason to choose eagleFiler over Devonthink.
DevonThink does more but its UI is a comparative mess, and you have to live inside it with no ability for Spotlight to index files (although I believe Spotlight *does* works in the iOS app). I used Devonthink for many years, starting with DevonNote, then Devonthink, then Devonthink Pro. But the quirks and unfixed bugs (specific ones which I reported and finally got fixed two years after I stopped using the app) made it unpleasant to continue using.
If I needed all the features - especially unique ones like OCR - I’d still be using it. But I don’t. I switched to EagleFiler, and all my files remain on my drive in folders and are referenced in the app, so Spotlight works fine. And I recently started using it to archive my tens of thousands of saved emails, thus allowing me to stop using the powerful but extremely unMaclike MailSteward app.
I’ve recently been using it with my web browsers in conjunction with some of the provided bookmarklets that will save bookmarks or pages in pdf, Rich Text or Safari web archive formats.
https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/bookmarklets
I just find it a cleaner, more attractive, and somewhat faster experience overall. And the owner and main dev Michael Tsai usually responds quickly to questions in the forum, which is head and shoulders above trying to contact Devon Technologies about anything.
https://c-command.com/forums/forumdisplay.php/7-EagleFiler
With EagleFiler you can freely edit shared text files on either device as well as create new ones, and syncing with Dropbox/iCloud (though renaming/deleting outside the Mac can cause EagleFiler to lose track of the files). For multiple Mac or Mac/iOS access see:
https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/help/how-can-i-put-my-librar
https://c-command.com/eaglefiler/help/how-can-i-access-my-lib
There’s a free trial, so I’d recommend checking it out and comparing it to Devonthink. But because there’s no iOS app, I’d lean back towards Devonthink if I needed full text/image/pdf access on iOS devices.
Posted by satis
Jul 6, 2018 at 12:09 AM
Jeffery Smith wrote:
I would like to like DevonThink, but I still have fits trying to use it
>on multiple computers. Eaglefiler, to me, seems more like a place to
>collect PDF files. And it doesn’t appear to have had any new features
>for years. I haven’t used (or heard of) Keep-It. Right now, my bucket is
>Evernote.
Keep It ($49) is the replacement for Together. It’s competing with Devonthink Personal ($49) and EagleFiler ($40) but also apps with similar UI and features like Findings ($49), Growly Notes (just $4.99!), the awesome Mac/iOS notebooksapp.com ($18.99/$6.99) from Alfons Schmid, And probably more I’ll kick myself for not remembering.
I use EagleFiler. Funny that you mention PDFs, since with both EagleFiler and Devonthink I had separate libraries just for archiving/readin PDF magazines. But 99% of the time I use the apps to import text/webpage/rich text documents, using the app as my shoebox repository. When on the go in iOS that’s what I use Apple’s Notes app for, but EagleFiler works better for me for long-term storage, tagging and searching. (Though I generally hate tags.)
Posted by satis
Jul 6, 2018 at 12:14 AM
Oh, and I just noticed now that notebooksapp.com has a compatible version for Windows too, which can share documents with iOS (specifically not mentioning Mac, however):
https://www.notebooksapp.com/pc/