I agree wholeheartedly.
I’ve let on what I think about DEVONthink in the past, so I won’t repeat myself. To add to what I said at the time, and have said in unrelated posts since then, however: I entrust my data to DEVONthink because I can retrieve it at any time without using DT (DT does not use proprietary formats for storing records), because it is stored locally, can be synced locally, because DEVONtech keep up with ever-changing conditions, because it can be adapted to a variety of use cases. And, to be quite honest, because I trust DEVONtech; I’m not a particularly trusting person, and for me DEVONtech has succeeded in ticking the right boxes (says the anonymous person in the interwebs to the cyber-psychologist; interesting world, isn’t it?)
What you have described to me sounds just like a typical use case for DT. Whilst I agree that the trial will not tell you all (this is a professional piece of software; it is powerful and complex) - if only because of use case drift - taking the trial is still a valuable step (so I didn’t; well, not quite true, I was so convinced by what I read and saw that I actually used the DT3 beta and purchased the finished product the moment I could). The one thing which I could image you might initially slip up on is linking between records. Whilst there are numerous ways to do so, there is no menu entry “link record A to B”; you will actually need to decide how you link records - based, I think, on personal preferences. So that could be by adding links to other records in the metadata, replicating records to groups and thus grouping records which belong together, by tagging, using Hook and so on.
Many paths will lead to your goal when using DEVONthink. Which path you use is something of a personal thing - it may be worth just adding some data and playing. Don’t try to integrate everything and link it all up in the first week - give yourself time to figure what best suits your needs. Well, that’s my kind of unsolicited advice, anyway.
I remain amazed by the quality of both the software and the support offered by DEVONtech and its user base here on the forum. The software is worth many times what I paid for it. I use it daily in my professional life, as a volunteer in disaster relief and in my private life. Oh, and because someone has to be that boring guy: don’t forget backups, whatever software you end up using.