TreeDBNotes vs. Ultra Recall
 

I've read discussions about TreeDBNotes over the years. The current appearance on Bits du Jour prompted me to do a quick comparison. Let's just say my positive feelings about UR were only strengthened. Here are my comments posted on Bits du Jour, but I'm leery about doing quick-n-dirty evaluations. Any significant mistakes or omissions? I could have gone into even more UR features, but these are the things that stood out for me:

----- Comments on Bits du Jour -----
As a long-time Ultra Recall user, the positive comments about TreeDBNotes finally inspired me to take a quick look (by no means thorough or in-depth).

TDB definitely has superior rich text editing capabilities. UR's rich text editor is limited, but gets around this by letting you view/edit any document type in it's native editor and save directly back into UR. This approach is less convenient and self-contained, but gives UR more power and flexibility.

In addition to text, rich text, DOC and HTML, Ultra Recall handles a wide variety of file/document types including PDF, XLS, XLSX, DOCX, image files, etc.

Furthermore, it's possible to copy or link items into UR with drag and drop or copy and link buttons integrated into IE and Outlook. TDB appears to have only copy and paste or import of the text, rich text or html file types it supports.

I heard TDB allows multiple trees within a database which I see is true. However, it appears each tree is limited to a single template such as note, task, contact or password. UR has one tree per DB, but any type of item can go into the tree. So, for example, with UR you can have tasks in separate folders or together with related notes, docs, web pages, images, etc. without having to navigate to a separate tree.

I like the reminder/alert function in TDB better--nicer looking and includes a calendar which UR does not currently have.

UR appears to do a significantly better job of storing web pages and html-formated emails at closer to original fidelity.

UR search includes powerful full-text search and also finds words, phrases, tags anywhere within the DB. With TDB my search returned notes containing a particular word, but not contacts. Could be my search options are not set properly.

Overall, TDB seems easier to get started and use as a beginner and offers a little more in the way of eye candy. I believe UR has more power and flexibility overall, but it takes more digging and experimentation to find and use it all.

Please comment/correct any areas where lack of experience with TDB may have affected my impressions or perhaps comment on relevant plans in TDB's development roadmap.

I purchased TreeDBNotes Pro just a few minutes ago at Bits. However I wouldn’t try to compare it to UR; IMO it is not in that class at all.

I just wanted to give it a good look for a quick note-taker and/or collector. Unfortunately I am pretty much a software addict and whenever any outliner in particular is on sale like this I usually end up grabbing it. Most are no longer installed here though a few managed to stick and are currently installed and used by me.

While Ultra Recall is great for information collecting and organizing, I don’t feel it is very good for jotting down quick notes. Evernote is great for quick web clips but is also kind of wonky when using it for rich text editing. OneNote 2007 is probably the best I've found for fast note-taking but it too has its idiosyncrasies. And so I still grab any supposedly decent note-takers when I see them at a severely reduced price!

Thanks!

Jim

How I use UR to easily jot quick notes and collect web clips. Not the only way to do it in UR but seems very simple and effective...especially with practice to make it almost automatic....

Jotting a quick text note in UR:
Win-Z (global activation hotkey for UR)
Alt-5 (a Favorite set for quick access to an Info Item inbox where I put my quick notes)
INS (adds a new text item)

TAB (moves cursor to the Item Detail Pane)


Quick web clip:
Select the web clip info in a browser
Ctl-c to copy
Win-v paste clip into UR.

LOL! I've got the same weakness (or we could say passion) when it comes to new software. But I'm slowing down these days--mostly to create (a little) more time for other things...

UR works fine for all my text notes. I wouldn't want to store notes in a separate container since they're often tightly integrated with other content. As for rich text and tables in particular, I guess those with MS Office tend to be more content with UR for complex notes. Out of curiosity, do you guys have MS WORD? If so, do you edit UR notes externally in WORD very often?

I have Office 2007, but functionality UR inherits from riched20.dll is sufficient for 90% of my rich text notes. However, looking only at notes with tables, I end up in WORD roughly 30 to 40% of the time to access a few advanced features.

If I have a truly complex document (chapters, footnotes, etc.) I create and maintain it externally with WORD and just link it to UR.

I want to point out another advantage where Ultra Recall wins. With Ultra Recall, your data isn't locked up in a proprietary database. You can export it to XML with ALL metadata intact. Ultra Recall also provides ways for other applications to interact with it (via command line for one).

I found TreeDBNotes about a month ago and tried it out. I'm glad I hadn't purchased it yet before I found this program. I had to read through the help file a bit to get a full idea of what was possible with UR.

I too wish that URP had a quick note facility, that didn't require a rendering of the complete interface. My solution is to use a stickies note (Turbo Note Pro) while I'm doing my note taking tasks, and then I copy and paste these notes more leisurely into URP. Not ideal, but workable.

I believe that OneNote now has an innovative solution, which is to dock a quick notes window next to whatever application is in the foreground. This makes it possible to view your main app and take notes at the same time. Of course, if you're fighting for real estate, and who isn't?, then it's not ideal either.

Wonder what the ideal condition would be.
- Bal