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Hi,

I have recently swithced to using Mellel to write my thesis, after no end of grief using the Word/Endnote combination. I am at the point of deciding which reference manager to go with, and I thought I might ask for some opinions here. From playing around with them for a few weeks, I prefer Sente to Bookends, but there is a pretty large price gap between them, especially if getting the bundled Mellel+Bookends. Has anyone had the opportunity to use both, and what are their experiences? Also, I have converted all of my references in the text using Sente, will I be able to scan the document if I decide to go with Bookends?

Thanks,

Stefan

Are you writing in the sciences or humanities? I tried out both Bookends and Sente and ended up going with the former for many reasons. The citations in Sente (for the humanities) needed too much tweaking. Loved the interface in Sente, but Bookends overall suited my needs much better. Jon at Sonny Software provides the best support I've ever experienced with a developer.

I'm writing in the earth sciences. I haven't really had a go at testing out different reference schemes in Sente or Bookends, so I am not sure what the differences are there.

I also preferred the Sente interface, and it's search capabilities. The Bookends interface is a bit confusing, and the trial version only allows you to play with 50 references...which isn't really enough to try it out properly.

I can confirm daiyi's comments. For those working in the field of the humanities Bookends clearly is the better option, and the developer is indeed very helpful.

I own Sente and I am happy with it so far. I like the interface and its great support for PDF attachments and web archives. It also has nice integration with spotlight. You can actually use spotlight to find references. I use APA style and it works fine. Also the citation format editor is quite easy to use if you do need to tweak something. In many ways it's a lot like Mellel, you can customize almost anything you want, but the defaults are not always set-up the way you want (or might expect). I have found the developers to be responsive by email, but unlike Jon they are not very active on the forums.

- Mark