Switching from Windows to Macintosh - Chapter 8

Howdy, All;

The Mac is still being good to me. I've learned a few new tricks and tried some more software.

New Trick: You can use Disk Utility (part of OS X) to create a partition in a file, password protected and encrpyted, so that it acts like a file until you mount it (which requires the password). After you open it, it acts like any other drive. So I did this and put my accounting files and other secure items in it. If somebody steals my laptop, not only are they going to have to get past my login password, but they're going to be seriously hampered in their ability to do identity theft. If you want to learn how to do this, it is here: http://www.macworld.com/2006/10/secrets/decmobilemac/index.php?pf=1

About the mouse. I mentioned before that I had bought a Logitech Revolution wireless mouse for the laptop. The Mac has spontaneously rebooted, oh, probably six or seven times since I put that mouse on the system. The system has never done this unless the Revolution was involved. I noticed over time that every single time this happened, I had just done something with the mouse, either just starting to use it (waking it up) or disconnecting it or plugging it in. So something in the Logitech drivers for the Revolution wireless mouse can reboot OS X, and I think it happens if anything causes the radio communication between the mouse and it's little USB receiver to glitch. This issue does not appear to be an OS X problem or a Mac hardware problem.

So I bought a $15 USB wired mouse (also a Logitech, by the way). Problem solved, so far. Two weeks, no reboots. I'll let you know if this should change.

I've tried several different personal information management programs for the Mac. My primary need is for note storage - it needs to be very quick to enter a new note, and very quick to find it again. The programs I tested include Devonthink Pro, Yojimbo, Notebook by Circus Ponies Software, SOHO Notes by Chronos, OmniOutliner Pro and VoodooPad by Flying Meat. I'll devote a short paragraph to each one. Disclaimer: What follows is based on purely subjective opinion of one person playing with a program for an hour or so. None of these programs has been rigorously tested and this is not a formal report.

NoteBook is a very good program if you want to keep notes in a notebook format. It has a lot of neat features, such as automatically building indexes and tables of contents. This is really peachy if you plan to print out the entire notebook and use it as hardcopy, but the index and table of contents feature is not really needed in a computer environment where search capabilities exist. For me, although I like it a lot, it is not a great fit, but it is a high quality program if you like what it does. I did buy a copy and will use it for some things.

SOHO Notes - has a pretty interface but I found it very clumsy. Linking contacts to a note involves selecting a note in one window, then opening a special window, finding a contact, and telling it to link. I would really rather just drag & drop to add a link to a contact to a note. I don't find much value in the pretty contacts interface that is not in the Address Book that came with the Mac, and it's less compact. I can see some power there, but it's just too clumsy for me. I removed it from my system.

Devonthink Pro I actually tried twice, because they released a new version after I had checked it out the first time. There are things I like about this program. It can automatically classify information once you have sufficient entries in the system to act as a baseline. It offers a tree-structure of collections with items in them that could be very powerful, but I found to be unintuitive. It is possible to create notes in the tree and then not be able to find them immediately. This program would be my choice if I was primarily looking for a document control system, but it is not a great fit for me at present.

VoodooPad is a really interesting program. It is based on a Wikki concept and is very good at that. It's less good as a note manager, so it is not my primary choice, but I did buy a copy because I can see it being very useful as I create a wikiki of work-related information. It has the ability to publish a wikki as HTML, so when I get enough information in it, I will publish it to our intranet so others can easily access this data.

OmniOutliner can produce some very nicely formatted tables, and I like how it looks on screen, but it isn't really made for taking phone notes, and I do a lot of that. It is great for tabular data and lists, though. By the way, it comes 'in the box' with the Mac.

Yojimbo is the program I have settled on to use for my daily note taking. It has a clean, uncluttered interface that is easy to use and understand. I can create collections, and create notes in the collections quickly. It is easy to color code a note so you can easily see when you are done with that particular problem. If you sort it by modified timestamp, whatever you are currently working on will stay at the top of the list, and things you are finished with naturally fall down the list, so it's almost like an automatic prioritization. It is just right, without being too much, like some of the others. I haven't bought a copy yet, but I'm going to. The only feature I'd like to have that it doesn't is the ability to link contacts in Address Book with a note, preferably with drag & drop, so that when reading a note, you could click a link, and get the phone numbers of the contact. Other than that, it seems to be the best fit for me personally.

That's about it for personal information managers in the world of Mac.

Y'all have a nice day!
-Pop