Opinions On TheBrain?

Posted by Christophe
Jun 15, 2008 at 02:47 PM

Gary Carson wrote:
>Anyone used TheBrain? Specifically, PersonalBrain 4?
> >The Pro Edition Trial looks
>pretty good. I like the interface. There aren’t enough keyboard shortcuts, so the
>program probably has ergonomic problems (too much switching between mouse and
>keyboard required). Other than that, it looks like it could be pretty useful. I can’t
>afford to get the Pro Edition, though. Will probably end up with the Core Edition if I
>buy this thing.
> >Any feedback or opinions in general? Thanks in advance

I’ve used TheBrain (version 4.2) for a while (few months).
It’s an interesting software with specific pros and cons :

Pros :
- You can link (almost) everything to your Brain,
- You can link any Outlook items to every topics of the Brains (as shortcut : when you click on it, TheBrains opens the *specific* item),
- It’s VERY easy and VERY natural to create links and an hierarchical organization of your data. (you only have to drag’n drop from an intem to another one. You can create siblings or child/parent links). I think this point is (imho) the best feature of TheBrain. It is the easyest and the fastest way of creating hyperlinks I’ve ever seen in a software !
- It’s very visual,
- Each items can have a note (with an html editor) and have several properties,
- you can use keywords as tag,
- You can select a portion of text in you web browser and then drag it to the TheBrain icons wich remain permanently on one of the edge of the screen. This works also for files,
- You can paste a picture from the clipboard very easily as an item (One use of that for instance is taking a snapshot of a web site, then go to the brain, and paste the snapshot as the icon of your item. It stay like an icon, but when you pass your mouse pointer on it, the picture is enlarged.),
- You can assign type to links and to items with differents presentation of them,

Cons :
- It’s very expensive (249 $ to have the benefits of all the features)
- It’s very unergonomic…sometimes it can be very tricky to use it, you have a lot of manipulation even if you just want to copy and past items…and I really think that developpers should spend a while on making it easy and, most of all, fluent to use,
- The design of the interface is not so nice…
- It’s confusing. I think it depend on the mind of every one, but the easiness of creation of the data organisation have its downside : very quickly, if you don’t pay attention, you have A LOT of links everywhere and the interface don’t have enough tools to filter, select, enlight, move and focus easily on the point you’re working on.

I would say, as a conclusion, that TheBrain does (almost) exactly what the developpers says : it create another brain, as complex and as confused that the one we already have. If I use an Information Management software it’s precisely to (try to) organize the muddle I use as a brain !

Sincerely,
Christophe