iDocument or Together? Pros and cons please

[Yukon Jack]

Hi folks,

I'm hoping to get some productive feedback to the question of which of these two apps is considered the better one from those who might have used either of these.

My needs: A "shoebox" sort of document manager where I can drop scanned or digital receipts, URLs, product/book/movie reviews, home/garden/kitchen stuff, User Guides, tips and hints collected from here and there, recipes, and other odds and ends that need to be collected and organized for future viewing.

I've tried: I'm a committed user of DevonThink Pro Office for research projects and those things that need all the features that DTPO provides, but it's pretty much overkill for my shoebox. I've tried Yojimbo, Yep, and Eaglefiler, and none of these fit my particular needs.

I've purchased licenses to both Together and iDocument, and have had very good use with both of them. I've had occasion to contact the developers and here too I've had excellent and quick responses to my questions.

I'm at the point where I need to decide which one to continue to use for all my shoeboxing needs. They appear pretty equal in terms of features and ease of use, so I'm down to asking for other users' opinions.

If anyone knows of a site or sites that have done comparison reviews or feature comparisons, please post those links.

 

[sfwalter]

I've been using Paperless (https://www.marinersoftware.com/products/paperless/) for a couple years now with my Fujitsu document scanner. I really like it. I can easily tag documents, it will even read totals off of receipts.

 

[Yukon Jack]

@ sfwalter: Grr! Curse you for suggesting a third choice! I've just downloaded the demo and I'll try it out. Two things make it attractive: it supports the ScanSnap, which I use with DTPO, and Mariner is offering a discount if you already own a doc manager. Thanks for reading my post and offering a suggestion.

Update: Apparently Paperless imports documents into its library rather than creating links to the files. Since I store my files in a variety of Finder folders over several hard drives, I don't want a library to build up and take up space anywhere. Both Together and iDocument allow links and I've discovered that the links remain intact even if i move the original file to another folder.

-YJ

 

[Yukon Jack]

Decided on DTPO

Okay friends, based on some addition info in another thread [http://tinyurl.com/7axh7j5], I've decided to create a new database in DevonThink Professional Office.

While I knew DTPO was powerful and easy to find data, I didn't realize how awesome it is also WRT importing files and folders. I had previously set up a bunch of nested Finder folders where I dropped some 4000 assorted files (URLs, web archives, text files, PDFs, images, scans, and a few others) onto the new database. It took barely a minute to import all these files, which were contained in some 300 folders. All the folders remained intact and are now "groups" under the main library. Using the quick search field I looked for instances of "bento" to see what I had. In an instant these files popped up and I was able to browse them. DTPO's browser allows one to view the files at once without having to rely on Preview or Word to open them.

Since I'm already fairly familiar with DTPO and I have a Fujitsu Scansnap scanner (that DTPO recommends), it now seems to be the logical choice.

Once I did this, I figured I'd try importing into both Together and iDocument. Together wouldn't let me import my entire stack of nested folder but rather one group at a time. Even though Together lets you index files rather than directly import them into its own database, I was not able to do this when importing folders. Also, Together burped on a few files and crashed on me. Searching on "bento" was as fast as DTPO and the PDF showed up in Together's own window without having to rely on Preview.

With iDocument I was able to import my entire stack of nested folders and their files in one operation. No burps. However I don't like the viewing choices in the main window (icons, icons in groups, very ugly and space-wasting lists). Searching on "bento" was a breeze but here to look at a document, whether a text file or PDF, Together requires you to view in Text Edit, Word, or Preview, which isn't exactly what I'd call integrated.