Disappointed; wish I’d passed on this one

I’ve had this only an hour or two, and I’m already regretting spending money on it. I actually went to the developer’s website and downloaded a trial to see if I liked it before I bought, but the trial version would not install on my computer at all. I tried several times but it wouldn’t open. Looking back, I should’ve been more leary about making the App Store purchase in good faith when something was obviously wrong with the trial version. But the description sounded like just what I was looking for, the screenshots looked good, and I was lured in by the current sale price. This is a lot less expensive than some other document managers I was considering, so I went ahead and bought it. Wish I hadn’t.

Once I got it open, I was surprised and disappointed by the simplicity - I suppose some folks are looking for simplicity, but I expected more menu options, tags, formatting, etc. There’s not really an inspector to speak of; all it has is “document info” where the only thing you can modify is a description. There are no obvious ways to tag anything or save searches (or smart folders). I also couldn’t figure out how to clip or save webpages other than copying and pasting a URL, and even then it doesn’t hyperlink. Additionally, there’s no obvious way to annotate the documents once they’re in there - no way to add a note, sticky, flag, anything. If I can’t tag, flag, or annotate a document, then what’s the point of putting it in a notebook? If all I can do is sort files into folders and subfolders, then I might as well just stick to Finder for doing that.

In all fairness, I’m giving it 3 stars because it handled many file formats just like it says - PDFs, photos, text, and MP3s (it was the mention of video and music in the description that really caught my eye). As I mentioned, I couldn’t figure out how to put bookmarks or web clippings in here - maybe I’m missing something. But I have to admit I was delighted when I dropped a few MP3s in this program right alongside PDFs and they played back perfectly from within Notebooks. I also appreciate the clean look and feel. It’s not clunky or cluttered (unfortnately this is in part the lack of options). So I give it 3 stars; it’s okay. However, I wish I’d saved my money to put towards one of the more expensive apps with richer features.

SW168 about Notebooks - All Your Documents, Files and Tasks