Rather amusingly, I noted that one of the first things the manual for DEVONthink does is try to defend itself in comparison with Finder. I guess other people had the same thought I did.

It's not just that it organizes them but it associates documents on the relevance of their content. It's AI is fairly good at bringing up all the relevant documents of whatever I'm searching for and showing me their relationships. For example, lets say I'm gathering information about guerrilla warfare, insurgency, and counterinsurgency. If I wanted to see if there were any relationships between Mao tse-Tung, Che Guevara and TE Lawrence then I'd put the relevant terms in and see what DEVONthink spits back at me. Or, if I was just concerned about ol' papa Ho and I searched for him DEVONthink may suggest I take a look at this document that wasn't written by him but due to its content may have something to do with what I'm searching for.

DEVONthink is sort of like Quicksilver, sure Quicksilver launches applications but it does a whole lot more. DEVONthink can keep your files organized but, like you pointed out, big whoopie. It's strength lies in its intelligent searches of the stuff you put into it.

I've been having that same thought. I bought a devonthink license too quick because of the 43f discount. Just the concept of indexing all varieties of data in a smart system stimulates my obsessive tendencies. What's not to love? The first indication that my prospect for organizational nervana was in jeopardy was the realization that it doesn't like too many of my files??text files and pdf are about it. Others aren't even candidates unless I'm willing to give up formatting and editing, and manually export keystrokes. If I want to retain formatting/editing and still include it in the database I'll need to keep the original instance. So instead of replacing the documents folder with an all inclusive database I'll end up with parallel systems to synchronize because spotlight and devonthink are not cooperative with one another. That's a hefty price to pay for fuzzy search unless you have a specific need, which I don't. I decided take a fresh look at spotlight/finder. Impressive! Spotlight searches will include network disks as well in Leopard. Finder's keepers. :cool:

DEVONthink is at the heart of my system, but I'm a PhD student in English literature and am dealing with thousands of documents. I have both primary and critical sources in my database. For every research project I have done over the past two years, DEVONthink has helped me discover at least one (and at times many) articles I had not previously considered. Or had forgotten.

As a scrapbook, DEVONthink is bloated, ugly, and slow. As a notebook, DEVONthink is underwhelming and missing key features. As a research assistant, DEVONthink is without peer. I have seen nothing, anywhere, that can provide me the kind of in-depth, concordant analysis that I get from DEVONthink Pro.

I even bought DEVONagent to make it easier to get stuff into DEVONthink. It's sorta like buying Safari, but without bookmarks. Sure, it's a sucky primary browser, but it rocks for getting my research from the interwebs and into DEVONthink.

I'd say that DEVONthink isn't for everybody. If you just want a snippet holder, you're smashing a mosquito with a hammer. But if you are doing original research with a lot of literature (technical, literary, or scientific) to review, DEVONthink is your man. Or baby. Or ticket. Or whatever.