Concerning Reference Manager with 10,000 entries:
 
Paul,
If managing of references is your  most important software, you must have
thought carefully about some easy (because regularly, almost daily) to use
and fast backup system. Is it true that sophisticated data banks (like
yours) use several (e.g. indexing) files for the data (and a lot of bytes)
which will easily tie you to your keyboard for hours while you watch your
precious reference collection being saved to floppy disks or other fairly
safe storing media?
The questions one whould like to know the answers to
may be:
1. How many times has Reference Manager (or Papyrus for that
matter) crashed?
2. Does it do so more often under Windows than with DOS (or on the Mac)?
3. How many entries have you lost so far because they are somehow corrupted
and cannot be retrieved by the search function? (One might never know, of
course.)
4. How often, how much of the data base, and with which technique,
do you backup your data?
5. How long does a search (in single fields, in all fields, using wild
cards, etc.) take, using the average hardware power of the season?
6. Why does nobody design an essential reference data base as a
shareware product?
 
Perhaps somebody will at least want to design a check list so that the
community can test the various programmes on the market.
 
These are my 1 1/2 Pfennig
Christoph Viebahn
 
Institute of Anatomy
University of Bonn
Nussallee 10
D-53115 Bonn
 
Tel +49 228 733264
Fax +49 228 737301