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Essentially, DEVONthink Professional Office is the still offered DEVONthink Pro application with the new features plus the usual under-the-hood refinements and bugfixes with a version update. For a comprehensive discussion of DEVONThink's core features and capabilities, check out my full review of DEVONthink Pro 1.0.1 , and my 1.2.1 Mini-Review update, as well as my review of DEVONthink Professional Office 1.3 beta 1.
Last week, DEVONtechnologies released version 1.3 public beta 3 of DEVONthink Professional and of DEVONthink Professional Office, and on my third attempt I managed to download the 88MB file over my dialup connection (the successful on taking from 8PM Thursday evening to 11:38 AM Friday morning with a few pauses for email checking and article posting), and have been checking it out for several days now.
DEVONthink Professional Office 1.3 beta 3 adds the capability to convert PDFs that have not already been made searchable with optical character recognition (OCR) directly from within the application. OCR can be automated using AppleScript and Automator, items can be sent by email by using the contextual menu, and the built-in Web server deactivates itself when the user switches to another database for higher security.
In addition, DEVONthink Professional Office 1.3b3 supports more Brother and HP scan applications, downsamples PDFs to 150 dpi after OCR, and uses relative URLs to improve the compatibility of web sharing with proxies and firewalls.
Both DEVONthink Professional and Professional Office now allow the user to set the default database via the preferences, highlight words selected in the Concordance drawer of PDF, PostScript, and text documents, and don't mark encrypted PDF documents as duplicates anymore. Files that are converted during import into DEVONthink Professional (Office) are noted down in the log, the built-in Web browser has been enhanced, and new groups are (again) created inside the currently selected group. Some dysfunctional and unreliable scripts have been removed.
Both, DEVONthink Professional and Professional Office 1.3b3 also enhance the performance and fix minor bugs and glitches.
All in all, a nice slate of enhancements with this update. I had no complaints with the stability or reliability of the first two public betas of DEVONthink Professional Office, but any polishing of the code is always welcome, and the application does feel a tad speedier.
If you're unfamiliar with the DEVONthink applications, DEVONthink is a powerful database for all your digital files, be they text as most of mine are, PDFs, emails, Word documents or even multimedia files. Boasting "a refined artificial intelligence," DEVONthink is exceedingly flexible and adapts to the user's personal needs. And with the debut of DEVONthink Pro Office, if the files are not digital yet, paper capture support is now built-in.
You can use the program as a general purpose document archive, digital filing cabinet, email archive, or and project organizer; DEVONthink can do it all. One can even collect and organize data from the Web, enrich it with sound and movie files, and then export the finished product as a website or to an Apple Pages document to print. Or one can copy the content to an iPod. The possibilities are vast and variegated.
I find it a convenient place to store and retrieve data as eclectically divergent as stuff I refer to frequently like my Book of Common Prayer liturgical calendar and magazine article deadline schedules, and not so often such as song lyrics downloaded from the Internet. Whatever, DEVONthink's organizational and search capabilities make it a breeze to access any stored info almost instantaneously, and it all stores in a surprisingly compact central database file that makes backups simple.
Just copy the DEVONthink database file (normally in your Documents Folder) to your backup media and you're done. You can also schedule backups automatically in the Preferences. Because DEVONthink keeps all important data in one database, it doesn't matter where the data is physically located. DEVONthink uniquely integrates both local documents and live content from the Internet to keep all project-related information together in one place.
You can also use DEVONThink as a workspace to compose and edit new documents with its integrated RTF editor. Personally, I miss the AppleScript and text editing features of Tex Edit Plus for serious text crunching, but the DEVONthink text support is adequate for basic text editing and composing.
Another thing I LOVE about DEVONthink is that it supports import of Microsoft Word documents with formatting intact. I don't use Word, but I frequently receive Word documents as attachments, and DEVONthink serves nicely as a .doc "can-opener." Perhaps even more useful is DEVONthink's ability to open PDF documents as editable text. It's not as powerful as Adobe Reader, but I have DEVONthink up and running all the time, while Reader takes sooooo long to start up.
DEVONthink Pro Office's email archiver connects to all major email programs and imports messages or complete mailboxes to a database while keeping formatting as well as attachments intact. The simple interface resembles an email program and allows users to easily select mailboxes or messages to import. In addition, the user can filter messages by flags, priority or date range, and hide already imported messages.
DEVONthink Professional Office offers integrated support for paper capture via flatbed scanners or the Fujitsu ScanSnap that allows you to either scan documents directly from within the application or by importing already scanned files. The embedded ReadIRIS optical character recognition (OCR) makes the created PDFs searchable while maintaining their layout. It places an invisible but machine-readable text layer behind the scanned image.
The third major distinctive feature in DEVONthink Professional Office is integrated web sharing. Any database can be published on the local network as well as on the Internet with a single click. Users can search a shared database using standard web browsers such as Safari, Mozilla Firefox, or Internet Explorer on any operating system, from Mac OS X to Microsoft Windows, or Linux.
The web interface resembles common web search engines. Found documents can be either viewed directly in the web browser window or they can be downloaded to the local machine as .zip files. Bonjour support allows users of, e.g., Safari to easily locate shared DEVONthink Professional Office databases on the local network. Password protection keeps unwanted guests away.
In summary, DEVONthink Professional of one of my favorite Mac OS productivity tools, and the Office enhancement makes several magnitudes more useful than it already was. It's not cheap, but you'll look long and hard to find another applications that will do nearly as much for you for the money (and if you want a taste of the same basic technology at a really friendly price, check out DVONthink's "lite" counterpart, DEVONnote, for $19.95). Whether you're a DEVONthink (or DEVONnote) user, or have never tried the DEVON database programs, I encourage you to download DEVONthink Professional Office and give it a whirl. It will quickly spoil you.
And if you don't need the email archiving, OCR, or Web-server features, DEVONthink Professional is still available and a comparatively svelte 10 MB download and sells for a bit more than half the price of the Office version.
DEVONthink Professional and Professional Office 1.3b3 require Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later. Both variants are immediately available as public betas from http://www.devon-technologies.com . The final 1.3 release of both editions is now scheduled for February 2007. DEVONthink Professional can be tested for free for 150 hours of runtime until it needs to be properly licensed; DEVONthink Professional Office does not require a valid license code within the public beta period, but the email import function is limited to 200 messages per day and the OCR function is limited to 20 documents per day.
DEVONthink Professional Office sells for an introductory price of US$139.95 during the public beta period in DEVONtechnologies' online shop. After the end of the public beta period, the regular price will be US$149.95. Users of DEVONthink Professional or DEVONthink Personal are able to upgrade for the price difference of US$60 or US$100 respectively. Upgrade coupons are available. DEVONthink Professional Office is also available together with DEVONagent as the 'Infoworker's Pro Office Bundle' for US$159.95.
DEVONthink Professional sells for a regular price of US$79.95. Upgrades from DEVONthink Personal are available for US$45. In addition, DEVONthink Professional is available with DEVONagent as the 'Infoworker's Pro Bundle' for US$99.95.
For more information, visit:
http://www.devon-technologies.com
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Charles W. Moore
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