Forum Posts Feed
How to compare MyInfo and AskSam
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Steve
Dec 17, 2013 at 07:28 PM
Bitsdujour lists Myinfo as an upcoming deal. I use AskSam (since 2005) primarily for capturing web text (pictures are generally secondary to me) for research work for clients (travel). Blogs and the like for review later and reference. There’s other database stuff I do also that fields come in handy for.
Anyone who knows both of the PIM’s have any suggestions for me to focus on during my quick trial of MyInfo?
Thanks in advance.
Steve
Posted by 22111
Dec 21, 2013 at 02:32 PM
Sorry, this would be too late for your buying decision.
But…
1)
In your case, comparison of rendering web pages in both applics would seem to be the main criterion? And as far as I know, whilst MI is not perfect in this respect, AS is rather bad, so you would probably get “something better” anyway, from your possible switch. This might not necessarily apply to then searching those “clips”, but in your case, a switch from AS to Surfulater would have been preferable anyway? Too late for this year, was on bits about two months ago. But why not trial both Surfulator, and then WebResearch, which is 40$ all year round, whilst Surfulater is 2 times that price, without being necessarily better - there are some interesting comparative reviews of both in the web.
2)
MI is a rather good “all-round” outliner, but transition from 5 to 6 at least was a nightmare, most new functionality of minor 5 developments were lost for version 5 users (= just “beta” ones, with automatic cease of functioning then), so you had to buy version 6 in order to get them permanently (which means buying 5 just got you a very early 5, without even minor updates, and that version was bug-ridden and unstable, I several times lost data with it, so it was unusable in the end), and in 6 (if you then paid for 6), some functionality of 5 wasn’t there anymore.
Now, they prepare version 7 (no free update for 6 buyers, of course), and that will have a “new file format”, i.e. they will change their proprietary db to another one. Now from my experience with 5 and 6 (and the intro of many new bugs whenever they exterminated old ones), transition from 6 to 7, next year, well, what should I say… Let me put it this way: Perhaps version 7 becomes really interesting in some 2 years or so, but people switching to MI now and intending to then switch to 7 as soon as possible will possibly be in for a treat… or call it “adventure”.
Don’t be fooled by its frequent minor updates: They are quite minor and more often then not serve to eliminate freshly introduced new bugs. Conceptually-wise, 6 is not that much more elaborate than v5 4 years ago, and with all the new probs for the 7 file format to be resolved, don’t expect too much new things from 7 either.
Lots of good, half-baken ideas, ok, but then let them remain that way for years and years and years, instead of developing them - life’s too short for waiting forever. (Just one example, filtering of tags - if I’m not totally mistaken, quick item filtering by a combination of tags (or by successively narrowing down) is as impossible as it had been 5 years ago; and yes, such combinations are possible by searching, but that’s another subject.)
Sorry for being late one day but I didn’t want to harm their business these last two days. ;-)
Posted by WSP
Dec 21, 2013 at 09:42 PM
My experience with MyInfo has been quite different. I’ve used it for many years and have always found it extremely stable. I don’t think I’ve ever lost any data in it. It’s true that there are often minor bugs in the new releases, but that seems to be true of all software, and Petko is conscientious about fixing them very quickly.
Right now I’m working on two books—one in MyInfo and one in Evernote. That’s been an interesting experience. It has reminded me that I feel great fondness for MyInfo. There are just two features of Evernote that I miss badly in it: a synchronized mobile version, and EN’s ability to OCR text in images.
Bill
Posted by Cassius
Dec 21, 2013 at 11:35 PM
Try myBase (plus plugin WebCollect). It saves Web pages quickly. You can even do some editing of the saved Web pages, although it can be a bit of a pain. I’ve used various versions for years. Previous versions have been very stable, but I haven’t yet used the latest version enough to vouch for it. Search this forum for my previous comments on myBase.
Posted by 22111
Dec 22, 2013 at 02:43 PM
“My experience with MyInfo has been quite different. I’ve used it for many years and have always found it extremely stable. I don’t think I’ve ever lost any data in it. It’s true that there are often minor bugs in the new releases, but that seems to be true of all software, and Petko is conscientious about fixing them very quickly.”
Extremely stable, oh no (UR is extremely stable, e.g.). But I’m speaking of real use with early v5 flavours here, and their instability was the reason I then got the idea to cut up my trees into rather tiny ones, so I have to thankful for that.
“Petko is conscientious about fixing them very quickly” - yes and no. “Fixing” issues for a paid version by doing betas running out of time, then consolidating them into a new paid version only if you need those “fixes” permanently leaves users not willing to update with something quite doubtful, to put it VERY politely.