askSam 7 Professional on Bits du Jour

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Apr 16, 2009 at 08:13 PM

I am very glad I started this thread. I should note that I am (almost) cured of CRIMP and had little intention to take ‘advantage’ of the BdJ askSam discount. I mainly posted it as the program has been discussed here in the past (or mostly in the original outliners.com forum).

The discussions here brought up an interesting point for me. In the past I have witnessed several cases of PIM nostalgia, mainly by Ecco Pro and GrandView users. I am guilty of this myself, though not openly so, as I distinctly remember how prolific I was with FileExpress and A4 for DOS, but now can barely get Access to do anything useful.

The various contributions here have highlighted the great number of choices (perhaps too many) now available, as well as the different routes taken: personal wikis, 2-pane outliners and desktop search engines were mentioned, for example.

However, what I find even more interesting is that such tools are available for really very moderate prices. askSam, regularly priced at almost $400 (and actually selling at that price in the past, I imagine) has been compared with contemporary programs costing 8-10 times less—and found at significant disadvantage.

As much as I can empathize with developers finding it hard to earn a living while offering very useful products, I am very glad that I can experiment significantly (in the long term, which would not be possible through trial versions) with the various suggested methods and tools, without risking a month’s earnings. I do hope that the tools mentioned will go mainstream one day; and I mean mainstream.

Alexander