Lawd, but I loved my Kaypro – and the CPM OS. It broke my heart to have to move on. That sturdy Kaypro beast was being passed around among young, poor writers up until ten or fifteen years ago. Do you remember the character-based games, where our hero was the letter “p” and he had to climb ladders that were "H"s?
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Yes, l remember those game. Unbelievable were we are now with our computers and what software is able to do.
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I personally having trouble to get rid off the three operating systems.
- I cannot get away with the Mac because of DEVONthink (and, Bookends, and Foxtrot, and …).
- I cannot live without Linux because tesseract works best in the linux.
- and I cannot live without Windows because of Chief Architect.
I am too poor to have the latest of any of them. But, I need to all of them: so run two crappy/old machines side by side, all the time.
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Thanks you to everyone for all the great suggestions, advice, cautions. You all have convinced me. I bought a MacBook Air fully loaded (maximum ssd, storage, M2, etc), bought DevonThink, Agent, DTTG, all at great Black Friday prices. Why I’ve waited for decades is apparently the lack of external encouragement from such intelligent, thoughtful people as you all are. I’m very thankful this Thanksgiving for all of your comments
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Congrats on the new Mac! They’re always such fun 
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This is the solution I’ve been looking for. Sold!! Thanks so much. Like you, I’ve been using computers (not as a programmer really) since the days of punchcards and mainframes, Tandy Radio Shack and 5 in floppies. I truly appreciate your wise advice
A special thank you to you, bluefrog, for all the time and effort you put into guiding others. I truly appreciate you
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Ah, yes. RadioShack. MS-DOS. Punchcards. Big knob to turn on computer screen. Black background and green letters. Floppy disks. Dot matrix paper. 3 1/4" disks.
Thanks: you made an old guy feel…ancient! LOL
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I bought one Mac, after many years on Windows. I never lookked back. 1/100th the issues. They last forever. Mine are still working just as well 7 years after I buy them, and work wellfor many more years but not able to updat after that. Yes, they cost more, but I think are worth it
PLUS and this is huge for me. I’ m a senior now, and now every time I get stuck on something, I can call Apple support and get friendly knowledgable help.
And yes Devonthink is AWESOME. have been using it for many years. I think I may have had one issue in all that time that was immediately resolved by Support.
i worked in Apple support for 2 years. I think they would have to change more if they mad a Windows version, because windows app require more support, at least in my experience with both customers and myself.
Rick
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We are ancient 
Your not alone👍
Hey, thanks everyone for the constructive feedback. Something that most people here don’t seem to appreciate - not everyone can afford a Mac. I barely managed to scrape together enough for a mid-level Windows PC when my older machine died earlier this year.
That may be as you say. Otoh, Mac machines are far longer-lived than Windows PCs. So the investment can be stretched over a longer time.
And if the developers don’t want to work with Windows, there’s little you can do. I can feel with them. Wouldn’t touch Windows with a ten-foot pole.
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That is certainly understood, but as @chrillek pointed out, a Mac last far longer than a PC, generally speaking. I have a 2012 MacBook Pro I still use in support. I also have a 2012 Mac Mini I just nuked and paved as a gift to my father. Is it as fast as my M1 Mac Mini? No, but it’s still surprisingly fast and capable.
Also, a Mac Mini (which I’m a huge advocate of) is an incredible and affordable piece of kit. I probably spent $1200 on the 2012 Mini. So amortized over 11 years, it’s ~$110 per year or just over $9/month.
Less than Netflix…
Yes, they do last much longer. That’s one of the reasons why I would get one. But if an entry level Mac costs about half of my annual earnings, how would I be able to afford one in the first place?
I can’t speak to your specific financial situation. Just noting Macs are less expensive over time.
I had meant that last question to be rhetorical, so no worries about not being able to advise me on my financial position.
What I’m trying to get across is that we can reframe the initial capital needed to purchase the hardware as x amount per month over y number of years. But in pragmatic terms, Apple isn’t going to let me buy a MacBook or Mac mini and pay it off over the course of a decade.
I recently came across this project
Paperless NGX
It’s a document manager and seems to allow for shared access. It’s server based and I think it’s open source, does OCR, and allows for custom metadata
But
- It seems incredibly complicated to set up
- doesn’t offer any encryption as far as I can tell
- is it fully open source? Not sure
Those might be deal killers for some people.
I run DT3 server so my office staff can upload documents to my database. It’s great for that. But the server does not come close to full DT3 capabilities.
** I would suggest a much better have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too solution is to get a Mac and then run Windows on it using Parallels.
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