I am a Very New User and thrilled to have found this product. I can see how powerful it is but have only a novice understanding of it operationally. I am wondering how to best get started. I mainly keep my files in Dropbox, and they are not well organized. I also have files across two other computers that I would like to organize and archive so I can get rid of those computers (and buy a new one!)
Should I first import from Dropbox and the other hard drives, organize, and then archive to DVD? I am sure I have multiple copies of files across the three environments and would like to eliminate duplicates.
Were you thinking of important all your data from three machines into a single database? That would probably crush DEVONthink. IMO, there are far better approaches to finding duplicates across multiple machines. I’d suggest checking out software made specifically to find duplicates. There are more than a dozen apps in the App Store for this.
As for the generalized topic of organizing your data – there is an enormous library of advice collected over many years in this forum on that topic. Many of the articles here will lead you to additional, external sites and books on that topic. On that front, I’d suggest browsing the forum and reading the suggested references. For example, in the forums, read everything that Bill DeVille has written in these forums. Joe Kissell’s DEVONthink book is excellent. The tutorials that come with DEVONthink are very helpful.