As I have been CRIMPing this last week or two (Surfulator, LWA and AM-Notebook), it dawned on me that my friend who was our network administrator at work left for a new job on Friday. While my copy of Ecco that he installed for me will continue to run, I do not believe that the remaining IT staff will be as open to any future requests for software installations. A personal netbook is one future option for me, and the other is portable applications that can run off of a USB memory stick or a USB portable HD. I am curious if anybody has any favorite portable application combinations (since we all know that one PIM is never enough) that serve them well. I am especially drawn to task managers that can tie in to a calendar/alarm system. I would be great if Surfulator was portable, and if they could incorporate custom fields in their templates. In the mean time, I am playing with LWA and AM-Notebook. None are a match for Ecco (which is not portable) for my tastes, and I am waiting for IQ to make it out of beta testing, but it would be great to hear what others find useful.

--Ken

I believe the Win 3.1 version of Ecco might be portable. If I recall correctly, it used an ini file rather than entries in the register. You might lose some functionality, or you might have to put a couple of files on a C: drive, but it's worth a try.

-c

Brainstorm on USB would be by far the #1 portable application for me.

+ If you don't need to add web clippings, just to access what you already have, Surfulater can export everything to an HTML with Java package that wprks brilliantly.

MyInfo works portably from a USB stick and could be a very nice task manager... although it does not have integration with Outlook.

Steve

Another option to take a look at might be Debrief Notes, which also can be run from a USB drive. It is a fairly fully featured application combining notes and task management. The user interface takes some getting used to -- and seems to be the deal-breaker for a lot of people -- but I suggest you give it a whirl.

Steve

+Of course, UltraRecall is another candidate that works from a USB stick (I never have used it as such myslef due to the size of my databases) and its files can be encrypted. In addition, UR can sync with Outlook.

The only deal-breaker here may the possible slowdown of future development; but it is a mature product.

Sorry for the many posts; it seems that as soon as I post something another idea comes to mind that I hadn't thought of earlier.

Do take a look at PortableApps http://portableapps.com/ --it may be able to make your favourite apps portable, even if they were not designed that way.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

Another option to take a look at might be Debrief Notes, which also can be run from a USB
drive. It is a fairly fully featured application combining notes and task
management. The user interface takes some getting used to -- and seems to be the
deal-breaker for a lot of people -- but I suggest you give it a whirl.

Steve

I remember when there was a thread on Debrief last year, and I passed on the program at the time. I will take a closer look. Stephen, do you find the program to be stable?

--Ken

Stephen,

In a previous post, you mentioned programs from Simbust ( http://www.simbust.com/default.php ). Do you know anything about them?

--Ken

Ken,

My reference to simbust was just to make the list of outliners complete. I really have no knowledge of the quality of their products, I'm afraid.

As for Debrief, I haven't had any stability problems -- although I haven't used it heavily either. I like the comprehensiveness of the feature set, but overall it isn't as convenient for me as my Zoot/OneNote combination. However, if I wanted to work from a USB stick, I think I would make Debrief a serious contender, because it is one program that does almost everything (notes, journaling, task and project management, address book, outlining) -- the exception being the capture of PDFs and web pages.

The one feature that most separates Debrief from other applications is that it supports dedicated, single-pane outlines as a document style. That is, you can have a hierarchy of outlines. Admittedly, the outlines are not the most robust, but they are genuine single-pane outlines. Each item of which can have an associated note, which adds an additional dimension to the information.

I've found the developers to be fairly responsive. I commented that the editor panes could use some white space between the start of the text on the left and the left border, and they added that in the next release. There has not been a new release in several months, so I do not know how much further it will be developed, but it seems a fairly mature product now.

Truth is, I've been surprised the Debrief has not generated more enthusiasm from this group. I can only attribute this to the user interface which is definitely not the most intuitive.

Steve

Cassius wrote:

I believe the Win 3.1 version of Ecco might be portable. If I recall correctly, it used
an ini file rather than entries in the register. You might lose some functionality, or
you might have to put a couple of files on a C: drive, but it's worth a try.

-c

Cassius,

Do you know which version of Ecco was designed for Win 3.1? I've never heard about this possibility. Do you know the source, or did you discover this yourself?

--Ken

Ken wrote:

Do you know which version of Ecco was designed for Win
3.1? I've never heard about this possibility. Do you know the source, or did you
discover this yourself?

--Ken

Ecco 3.1 or 3.1.1, I believe.

You may find it on one of these abandoned-ware sites:

http://www.oldversion.com/

http://oldapps.com/

http://old-versions.net/

http://www.filehippo.com/

Be sure to test any downloads for viruses & spyware.

If you absolutely can't find it, I can try to find it on an old floppy, but no guarantee & it might take some time.

-c

Also try joining the group at

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/eccoprosupport/join

and ask for help.

-c

I've got floppies of all versions of Ecco. If anyone wants a copy...

I think the "Eccoext" program allows for running the latest Ecco 4 off a USB drive. I remember people talking about it on the Ecco Yahoo group (the newer ecco_pro group, I believe). I've never tried it though.

Chris

Thaks for the additional information everybody. I believe that I still have every version of Ecco at home, as I was one of the early users in 1993. As a matter of fact, one of their slaes associates came to my office to talk about the multi-user capabilities of the program (I live and work near their original Arabesque offices). I have joined the Ecco_Pro user group, but to the best of my knowledge, it is not clear that the Extension will work on a USB drive on a host machine where you have no Administrative rights. It seems that the program still writes to the Registry, although it is not clear if that is a problem if you have no Admin rights.

I guess that I am tossed between buying a netbook and loading the software that I want, and going with a USB drive and portable applications. The good news is that I do not have any pressing deadline, so I can evaluate without pressure. I am still interested in IQ, but it just seems so daunting every time I open it up. Again, I am glad to not have to make any hurried decisions.

--Ken

Ken wrote:

I am still interested in IQ, but it just seems so daunting every time I open it up. Again, I am glad to not have to make any hurried decisions.

If you know Ecco well, you've got 75% of the learning curve behind you...

IQ is like Ecco + web capture, + multiple parents + equations + pivot tables + more flexible UI

Pierre Paul Landry wrote:

If you know Ecco
well, you've got 75% of the learning curve behind you...

IQ is like Ecco + web
capture, + multiple parents + equations + pivot tables + more flexible UI

Thank you for the reply, Pierre. I do have much of the learning curve behind me, and I have to remember that I did not learn Ecco in a day. I know this is going to sound a bit strange, but sometimes when I am in the program, I get the same feeling as I did when I tried to evaluate UR. Too many properties boxes for my brain to handle! Ecco has a kind of simple elegance, but then Ecco was not designed to do what IQ can do. Also, IMHO, Ecco has the best help files that I have ever seen written for a program. There is something about how the help files were written that made them extremely easy for me to understand what I needed to accomplish a task at hand. I should probably put a bit more time into learning IQ, as it seems to address much of what I want in a program.

--Ken

Not an information manager exactly, but you might want to take a look at SoftMaker Office 2008, which includes TextMaker (word processor), PlanMaker (spreadsheet) and SoftMaker Presentations (I guess they didn't want to call it PresentMaker!) and can run from an USB stick. It claims to be the most MS Office compatible suite and can run from quite modest hardware.

Alexander