Boswell 4.0.1 ($99.95) is one of a number of things that I wish I had when I was at college in the 80’s.
As they say on their web site Boswell will “organize, archive, categorize, automatically cross reference, manipulate, and retrieve all your text. You will never again lose it, overwrite it, accidentally destroy it, or mislay it.
Boswell will not only organize your text for you but will do so automatically. That means you will not have to spend lots of time “filing things away.” And then Boswell can easily retrieve any text you gave it any time you want it in ways you could never do before.”
From my perspective at first I couldn’t work out if Boswell was a database, a sort of WWW on my Mac, a PIM, or a really smart “list” product. The more I used it the more I realized just what it was capable of, and that is something you have to realize. You need to give Boswell time to grow on you. The more you use it the more it seems to understand you and adapt to your style of usage. I am serious – it sort of merged into what I wanted it to be!
I would certainly recommend you read their First Look document before you start to use Boswell, and start with a small project first. I made the mistake of trying to use it straight away on a relatively large project I was working on. I failed. I had to stop and spend a week just “playing around” with the product on a much smaller project. It was well worth the extra time.
Boswell isn’t just a product for students. As I said I have been using it during a recent project and it has been unbelievably useful,not only for the collation and storage of the data, but also in the construction of the documentation. I reckon that if you start using it as a Student you will use it for life – which brings me to the price. $99 is at the high end for a professional user but is way too high for a student. If I was Copernican I would give serious thought to getting my product into the student market – I think they would create customers for life!
So what are the other things that I wish I had at college? Well a Mac of course (we didn’t even have PC’s having to make do with scheduled time on the college mainframe), and the choice of degrees that exist today (Economics really was pretty boring).
I look at the students today, sat in Starbucks with their Mocaha Light’s, RAZR V3’s clamped to their ears, and tapping away on their Mac’s and I am incredibly jealous. It really is a whole world away from my library books, canteen coffee and pay phone!
Finally, they named the product after James Boswell. Who was he? He was the chronicler (and friend) of Dr Samuel Johnson, notable primarily for his book “The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D.” Their hope is that the application will fulfill the same role for you, and it comes pretty close. I love this product!