Some questions about DTG

I’m a long time DevonThink Pro Office user. The idea of having my reference database on my iPhone is attractive, but I’ve a few questions.

  1. Just how robust is this app? Are most people porting over their entire database, or just portions of it? I’ve got 1.8 gig and growing for mine. Can this app really handle that? I’ve little interest in having to pick and choose which folders are synced.

  2. From reading prior reviews and threads, it looks like this app has been disastrously unstable, and while I’m seeing indications that it’s better with the latest version, it would appear stability is still an issue. There are several recent posts lamenting crashes while syncing.

  3. How quickly does this app sync new, moderately sized items?

I just started using Evernote to capture items I need to have on my iPhone. Things like travel itineraries, restaurants I want to visit, etc… Evernote makes it easy. I don’t want to use Evernote as my primary information repository, that is still DTPO for me, but so far Evernote is great at those simple things you want to make sure you have with you on the road. If I could easily sync my DTPO database to my iPhone, I could then just dump these kinds of items into DTPO and use this app to bring them up on my iPhone. But size of my database, stability of this app, and speed are concerns.

Would love to know how others are using this app and what their real world usage experience is like.

I have a database with a large number of files that I use for testing, but at this point nothing that large, with regards to size. With the current sync process, syncing portions of a database is probably the best approach.

We’re working on a new sync process which will sync whole databases. My current intent is to get the new sync process implemented (as that is still a very common point of problems), then start addressing some of the other issues (such as performance with large databases).

There have definitely been stability issues, but I’ve been making progress in reducing those issues, though there seems to be a new crop of issues related to sync. My main focus right now is on getting the new sync process implemented, as this should reduce those issues and allow us to move forward (the current sync has limitations).

To be clear, what do you consider a moderately sized item?

I hope others will give you their experiences, as this is just my perspective from development.

Jon, thank you for that very informative reply, much appreciated.

Sounds to me like my best bet is to wait for the new sync process to be implemented. Having worked in the software development industry in years past, I know how reticent developers are to talk about time lines, and rightly so. But speaking in broad strokes, is this something that is roughly a year out? Or a few months out?

Regarding my question about syncing ‘moderately sized’ items, let’s say I have 10 new items that are each about 20kb. How should that go?

For me, syncing portions of my database would be problematic. It’s not really structured in a way conducive to that. Things I might need on the fly are scattered throughout it. So I look forward to hearing how the new sync process goes. If you would like an alpha tester, I’m happy to take it for a spin and give detailed feedback.

regards

We’re hoping on the order of a few months.

I just did a couple of tests to get a rough idea.

With 11 plain text files at 21.6 KB each, it took about 4 seconds.
With 83 files (a variety) coming in at a total of 27.1 MB, it took about 1 minute, 8 seconds.

I don’t yet know how the new sync will compare, but I wouldn’t expect it to be extremely different.

those sync results look great.

I look forward to hearing when the new sync methodology is up and running. Hopefully you guys will send out an announcement to the email list.

best regards, and I wish all of you at devon technologies a great holiday season.