Been using Bookends for more than a year now and still sometimes feel that I'm really only scratching the surface - it's the powerful an app. It does the basics very well. Input your sources and you can cite while you write, then scan the document at the end and produce in-text properly constructed citations and a bibliography.

That alone makes it worth the price.

It also has extensive notes, key wording, ratings and other categorisation tools and it links into other apps like DevonThink. I manage Citations on Bookends and data in DTP.

If I had to nitpick: I'd like to be able to choose what fields appear in what tab - for instance, have the ISBN on the main tab of the inspector rather than as additional info - and I've not found a way to do this. That Inspector pane is not the prettiest either. There: a couple of nits, picked.

There is a learning curve, and it take take a while to get the hang of some of it, but well worth the effort. That's true of all citation managers.

That said, a robust citation manager that does exactly what it says on the tin, with extraordinary support (issues resolved within hours in my case) and well worth the money.

By comparison I've used Sente, End Note, Zotero at different times but keep coming back to BE.

Bookends is the best. I've tried them all -- Papers, Sente, Endnote. All have nice features (well, it's hard to say that about Endnote). But Bookends has it all: power features, reliability, exceptional customer support, and a long history of continued development and refinement. It may not be the prettiest of the bunch (but Jon is constantly improving that as well, as in this latest update), but this class of application is one where function is more important than style.

A definite 5 stars. BE11 is one of my most used and best loved software progs and I have just bought BE12. Really looking forward to it.

And HUGE praise for Jon at Sonny who must provide the best software support on the planet.

Reference manager no-brainer. If you are still using Endnote etc, run while you still can :-) OK bit much maybe :-) but Bookends is the Biz!

I use Bookends together with Mellel for my dissertation and the integration of both apps is very good. My favorite feature: Live Bibliography.
Bookends support is very good and fast.

I just started a new project (BRAF V600E mutation in cancer) and did a literature search in BookEnds. There were a few little problems which sometimes the author literally fixed within minutes and provided me with a new build - I'm amazed that he managed to stay calm as I must have driven him bonkers with all my requests for improvements or changes (I sometimes send 5 mails within 10 minutes) and I can be quite argumentative ;-)

The absolute killer feature for me is the "import pdf from internet (if available)". Out of 3337 citations in my library 1084 now have a pdf of the article attached without me needing to do anything - and if I can figure out how to use the library subscription to access the PDFs on ScienceDirect etc then Bookends should be able to get many more for me without the need for my involvement.

I still haven't used all the features - not by a long shot - but usability and support alone make this a 5 star app!

I'm trying out the trial version -- but am having trouble with formatting.

I;m used to creating bibliographies that are numbered, and with having my references within the word document written in with numbers not author names. How do I use bookends to do this?

I've played around with the format manager a lot, but it always just formats int he word documents by alphebetizing the authors, and not using numbers in text...

If anyone has any advice, I would greatly appreciate it! I like that this software is better for mac users, but if I can't figure this out, then I don't think I'll make the switch over...

Powerbook G4 1.67 GHz 1 GB, OS 10.4.11 latest patches.
I downloaded a trial a couple of days ago and imported 15 references from my Endnote library. Bookends "quit unexpectedly" within minutes and has done so several times when attempting to quit the application normally. More seriously, it has just crashed while I was simply moving the pointer from one item in the menu bar to the next. I have also been trying out Sente, and so far it has been completely stable. I haven't yet used the two applications enough to make any other useful comments about them.