I have been using DT Pro with ScanSnap scanners for years now, but I guess I have grown out of it or don’t see its value anymore.
They are working on it, but the synching of DBs betweens Macs is still not available. The iPad/iPhone apps is horribly slow to render documents compared to the Dropbox app. Dropbox does support the synching of the DT DBs – i.e. it knows the format, but it’s unofficial and the resulting directory/file structure if you want to browse it is horrible.
Furthermore I never really like centralized proprietary databases, and I can’t leverage Time Machine.
Bottom line, with Fujitsu ScanSnap software (which includes ABBYY FineReader) properly configured, a good directory structure, Time Machine, Dropbox, PathFinder and QuickLook, I’m not really using DT Pro anymore.
Slight improvement on the previous beta version, but still incredibly subpar compared with the iPad and iPhone versions or a real Kindle.
- The fonts still look like a quick and dirty port from another OS. The app is probably doing - badly - it's own rendering
- You can't change the typeface
- You can't change the line spacing
- If you reduce the words per line, you end up with gigantic margins but the application window doesn't shrink
- No cut & paste even though you are...on a computer
When you own a real Kindle, you see how much of a fugly hacked kludge this app really is.
I have the iPad version and it is fairly good and competent, but this OS X version is a disgrace. The app itself seems to be an overnight hack job and the font rendering looks like sh*t.
It's a fine player, but unfortunately it's plagued by a long known nasty bug regarding optical outputs or Bluetooth devices, as it just crashes with an "Handle error" message when using them.
DEVONthink Pro Office (DPO) is one of the main reason why I'm using a Mac. I have tried many such products under Windows, but there's no real replacement.
I have a Fujitsu S300M scanner and the integration with ABBYY FineReader OCR inside DPO is excellent.
When using DPO, your data is stored (accessible through a built-in web server) on your own machine unlike products, which means you don't have any size/amount limitations and confidentiality issues. Web clippings are saved without any issues and as you see in your browser. Documents like PDFs or TIFFs can be rotated and zoomed at will without resorting to external applications. You can do PDF annotations, there's an smart tagging system, ...
I have been using the product for a good two years now, the main letdown for me are the lack of SSL support in the web server, and the impossibility of doing delta synching of dtBase2 file with a remote location. My main dtBase2 file if about 15 Gb and if I change a single file within it, I have to recopy the whole thing. :-/
It's a shame that Chicken of the VNC has not been updated for a while, but it is still working fine.
People disapointed with JollysFastVNC's new (expensive) pricing should consider Chicken of the VNC. I believe most people will find it good enough and a more sensible option.
I have been an Elite + FIlmPack "customer" for several years now, but enough is enough with PACE. I own a significant amount of commercial expensive software packages, and none has saw the need to use this kind of tool; which amounts to consider all users thieves implicitly.
Just say no to software using things like the Interlok PACE rootkit and other such DRMs, this kind of crap.
As for DOP itself, it's not bad but not that good either considering the price and its downsides. Adobe Camera Raw as a RAW converter is very good, for those that are using Lightroom and/or PhotoShop, Noise Ninja for noise removal and PTLens for barrel distortion, chromatic aberration, vignetting, and perspective correction are superior to DOP equivalent features.
All-in-all DOP main feature is perhaps its automation, but then again its automated results are sometimes very goofy (e.g. "over the top" saturation of colors), its user interface is clumsy and counterintuitive, the Mac port of the Windows version not following Apple's GUI guidelines, the software processing algorithms are themselves very slow - not to mention that the app itself is a RAM/CPU hog, and the number of supported lens per body is quite limited.
Unless DxO gets its act together and dramatically updates the v6, removes the rootkit and provides improved Mac OS X support - it still is not SL compatible at this time, even though they had ample time to use/test beta versions of SL; I won't upgrade.
It took a long time, but finally the v1 release is here and it doesn't disappoints.
In a nutshell, it plays everything you can throw at it without issues, including huge HD films encoded as H.264 Matroska files, something that no other player at this time can do consistently and reliably. MPlayer OS X Extended comes close, but at time it still has issues with sound going out of sync with the video.
It could use a nicer looking UI, but aside from that it does its job very well.
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SABnzbd+
+4
DEVONthink Pro Office
Digital Fury reviewed on 21 Jul 2011
They are working on it, but the synching of DBs betweens Macs is still not available. The iPad/iPhone apps is horribly slow to render documents compared to the Dropbox app. Dropbox does support the synching of the DT DBs – i.e. it knows the format, but it’s unofficial and the resulting directory/file structure if you want to browse it is horrible.
Furthermore I never really like centralized proprietary databases, and I can’t leverage Time Machine.
Bottom line, with Fujitsu ScanSnap software (which includes ABBYY FineReader) properly configured, a good directory structure, Time Machine, Dropbox, PathFinder and QuickLook, I’m not really using DT Pro anymore.
-1
Kindle
Digital Fury reviewed on 02 Nov 2010
- The fonts still look like a quick and dirty port from another OS. The app is probably doing - badly - it's own rendering
- You can't change the typeface
- You can't change the line spacing
- If you reduce the words per line, you end up with gigantic margins but the application window doesn't shrink
- No cut & paste even though you are...on a computer
When you own a real Kindle, you see how much of a fugly hacked kludge this app really is.
Kindle
Digital Fury reviewed on 10 Jul 2010
Vox
Digital Fury reviewed on 22 May 2010
+4
DEVONthink Pro Office
Digital Fury reviewed on 03 Apr 2010
I have a Fujitsu S300M scanner and the integration with ABBYY FineReader OCR inside DPO is excellent.
When using DPO, your data is stored (accessible through a built-in web server) on your own machine unlike products, which means you don't have any size/amount limitations and confidentiality issues. Web clippings are saved without any issues and as you see in your browser. Documents like PDFs or TIFFs can be rotated and zoomed at will without resorting to external applications. You can do PDF annotations, there's an smart tagging system, ...
I have been using the product for a good two years now, the main letdown for me are the lack of SSL support in the web server, and the impossibility of doing delta synching of dtBase2 file with a remote location. My main dtBase2 file if about 15 Gb and if I change a single file within it, I have to recopy the whole thing. :-/
+2
Chicken of the VNC
Digital Fury reviewed on 21 Jan 2010
People disapointed with JollysFastVNC's new (expensive) pricing should consider Chicken of the VNC. I believe most people will find it good enough and a more sensible option.
+12
JollysFastVNC
Digital Fury reviewed on 21 Jan 2010
$40 for a VNC viewer?
Based on its tangible qualities and features, it's marginally better than the free ones, so $5 or $10 would be more realistic.
+4
DxO Optics Pro
Digital Fury reviewed on 19 Sep 2009
Just say no to software using things like the Interlok PACE rootkit and other such DRMs, this kind of crap.
As for DOP itself, it's not bad but not that good either considering the price and its downsides. Adobe Camera Raw as a RAW converter is very good, for those that are using Lightroom and/or PhotoShop, Noise Ninja for noise removal and PTLens for barrel distortion, chromatic aberration, vignetting, and perspective correction are superior to DOP equivalent features.
All-in-all DOP main feature is perhaps its automation, but then again its automated results are sometimes very goofy (e.g. "over the top" saturation of colors), its user interface is clumsy and counterintuitive, the Mac port of the Windows version not following Apple's GUI guidelines, the software processing algorithms are themselves very slow - not to mention that the app itself is a RAM/CPU hog, and the number of supported lens per body is quite limited.
Unless DxO gets its act together and dramatically updates the v6, removes the rootkit and provides improved Mac OS X support - it still is not SL compatible at this time, even though they had ample time to use/test beta versions of SL; I won't upgrade.
+1
VLC Media Player
Digital Fury reviewed on 07 Jul 2009
In a nutshell, it plays everything you can throw at it without issues, including huge HD films encoded as H.264 Matroska files, something that no other player at this time can do consistently and reliably. MPlayer OS X Extended comes close, but at time it still has issues with sound going out of sync with the video.
It could use a nicer looking UI, but aside from that it does its job very well.