UR vs AskSam

[armsys]

Can anyone enumerate the differences between the two products? Does anyone have the user experience with AskSam? Can you share with us please?

Armstrong

[ashwken]

Back in 2005 when I was evaluating this type of program I took a look at AskSam.

Although the program seemed capable I was put off by the price ($100+) and the fact that it did not support any type of Forms - except a free-form "Form" in the rtf editor, which may be a suitable solution for some, but it was not what I was looking for.

Then I took a look at Treepad and settled on the Business Edition ($40-50), which has a lot going for it - templates, clones, decent output options, and support for simple xml forms. But there were other needs which it did not address and the xml forms lack elegance, which brought me back to UR - something that I had investigated before settling on Treepad.

I realized that UR was probably going to meet the greatest number of my needs (and I realized that a database solution was preferable to an xml (text) solution), and was ready to bite-the-bullet on price ($90), when it became available at a discount at Bits du Jour (http://bitsdujour.com/).

Just my 2-cents.

[Jon Polish]

I use askSam and have built very large knowledge bases and information stores using it. The program is worth learning and it certainly has its quirks, but searching (either simpe or complex) is very fast. Importing, exporting and reporting are also fast (speed in my opinion is NOT one of UR's strengths), but I have found importing to be unreliable. Version 6 introduced "folders" but these are not what one would commonly understand. The "folder" tree is not able to be manipulated, so for me there is no functional improvement over version 5. There have been reports of the folder display producing some instabilities. Tech support via the askSam forum is, well just go there and see for yourself.

There is no cloning, and the interface is rather dated. Version 7 improves on the interface, but I don't see anything that would compel me to return to using the program on a daily basis.

InfoSelect comes close to UR and tremendously surpasses it in speed, but it has bugs and the developers are unresponsive. InfoSelect also is quirky and relies on system RAM for database storage which is another story. I do like it though.

By the way, both of these programs date back to the DOS days (and it shows).

Jon

[dasymington]

I used AskSam before switching to UR. It was UR's logical linking - the ability to explicitly group items into folders and a tree structure, rather than just relying on searches pulling them together - that made me switch.

The only thing I miss from AskSam is its very logical method of searching; UR's is a bit quirky - to say the least.

[armsys]

Hi Jon & ashwken & dasymington,
Many thanks for sharing your valuable personal experiences on AskSam. At least, Kinook now may consider some search optimization and speed enhancment.
Thank you again.
Armstrong

[wordmuse]

I used Asksam for just a little bit and found its non-structured approach to be a bit too wide open for me.

I also used to be a real fan of Info Select. In fact, I first bought it when it was called Tornado and competed with products like Borland's Sidekick.

In its prime, IS was a truly one-of-a-kind, superb program.

But over the years, I guess its legacy became something of a burden and I stopped using it at version 7.

For awhile, I used Keynote. A superb program for its time, and it was free. In fact it's still available, I believe.

But the developer moved on to other things. Having purchased two of Kinook's competitors products (MyInfo and MyBase), I have settled on URP3. The other two have things I wish UPR3 had (the way that tags are implemented in MyInfo, for example). But URP3 beats all of them (IMHO) overall. And Kinook's been incredibly responsive to we users.

I know this goes way astray of your original question. Somewhere in the mix, I think I provided some kind of answer. :)

Regards,
Bal

[dmahling]

I used AskSam, InfoSelect, and ECCO.

In my book UR surpasses both AskSam and Infoselect. It is cleaner, has a modern UI, sync with Outlook, web-integration, etc. ECCO's fully object oriented model still stands by itself, though the features, not updated for a decade now, are no longer what is needed in a web, XML, etc, world.

[StephenUK]

I agree that the lack of hierachy makes askSam frustrating. I never liked it for that reason and was an avid InfoSelect user for too many years to admit.

Now I sit on the fence and use both URP and IS. (And ListPro).

I like IS because:

- it is fast and very stable
- I can very easily create new directories (topics in IS) and notes at the point I want in the tree. (UR places things at the bottom which is most irritating, and has no simple one letter command for creating new directories).
- searching is easier with excellent boolean searches too.

But UR is gaining ground with me because:

- it is much better with web capture. (But it would be better still if it matched Web Research which is truly superb at doing that).
- it stores pdfs, something which for me is vital
- the favorites options and hoisting are truly excellent and made Verson 3 a major improvement.

In my view IS failed to realise until far too late that data was increasingly NOT just text based.

Neither of the programs implement thumbnails effectively. For that, one has to look at Paperport. It produces excellent thumbnails of Word and Excel documents and of photos and other media. UR is pretty useless at storing photos. Why? After all, it aims to store EVERYTHING, so why not get to grips with photos?

Now if UR could do the above and match WebResearch for webcapture, (and allow me to create directories at the point I am working in the tree) then I would truly like it.

Of all the similar products on the market UR is the best, but it could be much better.

If only Microsoft had purchased InfoSelect ten years ago we might by now have some really good products. As it is, Microsoft concentrates on all the wrong problems.... despite purchasing Lotus Notes. (Which never quite worked for individual users either).

As for OneNote, the lack of any sensible tree structure, and the concentration on character recognition at the expense of more useful functionality, makes it a major disappointment that may only become a threat to UR in several versions time.

[armsys]

Originally posted by StephenUK
Neither of the programs implement thumbnails effectively. For that, one has to look at Paperport. It produces excellent thumbnails of Word and Excel documents and of photos and other media. UR is pretty useless at storing photos. Why? After all, it aims to store EVERYTHING, so why not get to grips with photos? Actually you can view photos in UR provided:
1. you set the URL of the UR folder to the Windows folder containing photos;
2. In Tools | Options |Browser, include *Folder in "File Extensions to display in internal browser view:"
You'll be surprised by the the image display speed in UR when compared with PaperPort. Of course, thumbnails of .max files aren't supported in Windows Explorer. Are you satisifed with searching speed in PaperPort?

Armstrong

[quant]

Originally posted by armsys
Actually you can view photos in UR provided:
1. you set the URL of the UR folder to the Windows folder containing photos;
2. In Tools | Options |Browser, include *Folder in "File Extensions to display in internal browser view:"
but this displays thumbnails of EXTERNAL files, not of much use really ...
What we need is a "thumbnail view" in the child items pane ...

[StephenUK]

Armstrong. Yes, this does work quite well for a single directory. Indeed, Kyle kindly suggested this some months ago.

I agree with Quant that photos need ideally to be stored within the program to be consistent with the approach used for other data.

The particular problem I have is that:

- the directory structure where I hold the photos changes quite frequently and is several layers deep. If I import the parent directory, and represent it as a directory in UR, the files in that parent directory display nicely as thumbnails and do, as you say, load very quickly. But if I want to drill down to a sub directory I am just taken to Windows Explorer.

I can, of course, laboriously recreate my Windows Explorer directory structure I use for my photos in UR one directory at a time. But with perhaps 100 directories, and no way to synchronise the directory structure, it is a tedious process both to create and to maintain.

So I would suggest the value of internal thumbnails, or, if that is difficult to achieve, some way of quickly reproducing part of the Windows explorer tree in the UR tree with a means of synching the two. (I can't think that would be so difficult in programming terms).

[armsys]

Originally posted by StephenUK
- the directory structure where I hold the photos changes quite frequently and is several layers deep. If I import the parent directory, and represent it as a directory in UR, the files in that parent directory display nicely as thumbnails and do, as you say, load very quickly. But if I want to drill down to a sub directory I am just taken to Windows Explorer.
Not sure if I understand your situation correctly. The sub-folders can be synchronized automatically by Ctrl+F5, isn't it? The entire Windows sub-folder strucutre can be cloned into UR's Data Explorer.
Armtrong

[StephenUK]

Armstrong

I think I'm missing something. Thank you for the feedback. How do I clone the directory structure? Can I also update that structure using Ctrl f5?

This would all help me no end. Maybe it's another case of UR being able to do things if only one knew...

[armsys]

StephenUK,
For details, see http://www.kinook.com/UltraRecall/Manual/synchronize.htm.
The URL of the parent folder in UR must pont to an actual Windows folder. The folder structure sychronization with the Data Explorer is automatically done by UR by pressing Ctrl+F5.

Armstrong

[armsys]

Hi StephenUK,
The Windows folder structure cloning is automatically performed by UR. Assuming you're interested in cloning the structure of C:\Windows\System32:
1. Press Alt+Ins, select folder;
2. Select the newly created folder Info Item, press F2 it to rename to "System32";
3. In the System Attribute pane, press Ins;
4. In Insert Item Attribute dialog window, in the Name field, type URL and press Enter;
5. Back to the System Attribute pane, in the URL field, type "C:\Windows\System32";
6. Back to the Data Explorer, select System32 Info Item, and press Ctrl+F5.
UR will automatically create the folder structure as shown in the screen shot below.
Armstorng

[ashwken]

Originally posted by StephenUK

The particular problem I have is that:

- the directory structure where I hold the photos changes quite frequently and is several layers deep. If I import the parent directory, and represent it as a directory in UR, the files in that parent directory display nicely as thumbnails and do, as you say, load very quickly. But if I want to drill down to a sub directory I am just taken to Windows Explorer.

I can, of course, laboriously recreate my Windows Explorer directory structure I use for my photos in UR one directory at a time. But with perhaps 100 directories, and no way to synchronise the directory structure, it is a tedious process both to create and to maintain.

So I would suggest the value of internal thumbnails, or, if that is difficult to achieve, some way of quickly reproducing part of the Windows explorer tree in the UR tree with a means of synching the two. (I can't think that would be so difficult in programming terms).


Yes, the lack of "linkage" between the *folder display and the actual child is a pitfall.

Although you can File | Import | a Folder (and recurse) to any point in the Data Explorer, you can't "push" changes outward from UR - file rename, move folder (or maybe I'm missing something). If you make changes (file rename) thru the Windows Explorer Folder Display, then re-sync you end up with "orphaned" Items.

This method of folder import and re-sync is more of a reflection, a passive response. In many cases my Data Explorer ends up looking like a file system anyway, even if I don't fully import folders.

The absence of a File Manager mode in UR is puzzling - I have no idea how best to implement it.

[StephenUK]

Armsys, thank you very much for that. My first impression on trying out your suggestion was mild elation. There were all the thumbnails. It worked a treat.

But then synchronisation. Within UR Ctrl-shift-del deleted in Windows Explorer too. Great. Also, if I create a note in UR and synchronize, it appears in Windows Explorer. Great too.

But, as Ashwken just said, other things don't work so well. If I delete a sub-directory and its files in Windows Explorer and then sync in UR, the effect is for that sub-directory and its files re-appear in Windows Explorer. And if I delete the sub-directory in UR using Ctrl-Shift-del, it doesn't work as it does on a file. The directory remain in place in Explorer.

Also, after a bit of playing around my machine began to freeze up. Too much synching perhaps.

I think actually, it is not worth the effort. I am better just to go over to Explorer for my photos.

Essentially, anything that relies on synching, even if the synching were to be flawless, is difficult. One needs to remember the synching rules for a start.

It really would be much better to have all the photos actually IN UR itself and nonetheless to have thumbnails! If the only way to obtain thumbnails is by holding externally, linking and then synching, thing become inherently awkward and inelegant.

So I won't be using this procedure and will give up on storing more than odd photos in UR until it can be done internally. Maybe in UR4?

But thanks for all the help!

[armsys]

Hi StephenUK & ashwken
Alas, it's always my problem to see things a half cup full. I should have warned StephenUK to read the manual before venturing aggressive experiment with folder sychronization, especially the deletion part, which sometimes induces jaw dropping and/or cardiac anomaly. Neither did I expect all the worst scenarios occurring simultaneously. I was aware of all these discontents.
On the other hand, what if you were in Kinook's shoes, how would you implement the folder things? That's the area you can help Kinook and UR users.
For the photo database, I highly recommend ThumbsPlus (see http://www.cerious.com/).
For the PaperPort, I've been an intensive user since 1995 on a daily basis. If you switch the image format from .max to .pdf, then you'll find a twilight zone between UR and PaperPort.
Just my 2 cents.
Armstrong

[StephenUK]

Armstrong. Yes, I think "twilight zone" is a good description. I too have been using Paperport using the pdf option. I would just like to reach a point where I could use UR for everything, but probably I ask too much. But there is, presumably, Version 4, or 5, or 6 to come?..... It's just that I am getting older..... Many thanks for your suggestions. Stephen

[janrif]

Originally posted by armsys
For the photo database, I highly recommend ThumbsPlus (see http://www.cerious.com/). Armstrong, I'm OT here, but having used pretty much all photo dam software (including cerious), if you are a photographer, then my opinion is that there is nothing is more competent than IDimager for PC's -- see http://www.idimager.com/?page=home

That's my .02US which is now worth about .01US

[ashwken]

Originally posted by janrif
...then my opinion is that there is nothing is more competent than IDimager for PC's.
Jan,

Are you using the current paid version or the older freeware:

http://www.idimager.com/?page=freeware

Also, there 's some interesting utilities on this page.

[janrif]

I'm a licensed user v4.003 (latest as of a few days ago). I'll look @ the link. Thanks, Armstrong

[armsys]

ashwken & janrif,
Thanks a lot for shedding light onto IDImager. It looks promising.
My recent primary use of ThumbsPlus is to review all ashwken's screenshots daily. It's extremely fast for such purpose.
Yes, definitely I'll look into IDImager.
I just don't see how UR could become a photo database given my experience with ThumbsPlus.

Armstrong

[janrif]

for faster viewing look @ irfanview @ URL http://www.irfanview.com/

[ashwken]

Originally posted by StephenUK

... Paperport. It produces excellent thumbnails of Word and Excel documents and of photos and other media. UR is pretty useless at storing photos. Why? After all, it aims to store EVERYTHING, so why not get to grips with photos?

I think store is the operative word - this is the reflective or passive response I was referring to above.

Any manipulation of images (an Active Response - deletions, alterations, renaming, folder structuring) needs to take place outside of UR in Windows Explorer, then brought into UR via File | Import | a Folder and used in conjunction with the *folder display.

So long as you're ready to Store the images.

Originally posted by armsys
I just don't see how UR could become a photo database given my experience with [insert favorite software title]

Except for image (and tag) manipulation, the database functions provided by these programs and UR are not that dissimilar.

It will be interesting to see what lies ahead in the next release of UR.

[Ivan]

For those interested in tracking photos I would suggest a dedicated image catalog program like ACDSee

[armsys]

Originally posted by ashwken Except for image (and tag) manipulation, the database functions provided by these programs and UR are not that dissimilar.

It will be interesting to see what lies ahead in the next release of UR. [/B]
If UR comes this far, perpetual exclusion of photo database functionality in the future releases willl be, understandably, a great misfortune and disappointment to the UR users.
On the other hand, no products can prevail in the long run without the users' monetary support.
Just my 2 cents.
Armstrong