Update: July 8th, 2021. I still use Devonthink as a repository of data and as a way to search for documents. But now, nearly all of my writing and researching happens in Roam Research. With Roam, I have gone from an average writing output of about 500 words per day to about 1200 per day. And on some weeks as much as 1798 per day (top average for a 7-day week). Truly astounding. I may post more on it later or on a YouTube video. Peace!

DEVONthink Pro Office (DTPO) on a MacBook Air

It has been about 7 months since I first bought a MacBook Air with 4gigs of RAM and a 128gig SSD hard drive. My MB Air is built for a Latin American market and as such has a Spanish-friendly keyboard, and due to taxes and import fees and such a price tag 30% higher (gag) than I would have paid in the U.S. When I first bought the computer I foolishly believed that it was not good enough to run DEVONthink Pro (DTPO) because it did not have enough RAM nor a big enough hard drive. I have recently discovered how wrong I was. Not only does a MacBook Air run DTPO, but it runs it super fast and efficiently, even with only 4 gigs of RAM! It runs faster - much faster - than on my MacMini and my former MacBook Pro. And in my case, I have been able to keep my databases on a USB 3.0 Flash drive. Keeping your databases on a USB is not necessary or required but my DTPO databases are about 32 gigs in total and I do not want them clogging up the hard drive on my Air.

I used to believe that the main factor on the speed of DTPO was RAM. Why? About four years ago, when I doubled the RAM of my (now dead) MacBook Pro from 2 to 4 gigs it massively increased the speed of DEVONthink. But guess what? When I doubled the RAM on my MacMini (from 4 to 8 gis) it did NOTHING for the speed of DEVONthink. Nada! In retrospect, this should have been obvious. My original MacBook Pro had a hard drive that ran at 7200 rpm. And the standard MacMini runs at 5200 rpm. A slower hard drive will slow down DTPO regardless of the size of the RAM. And the super-fast solid-state hard drive on the MacBook Air runs DTPO very, very fast.

However, I must add one caveat. I have only tested DEVONthink with smaller databases, from 200MB to 5 gigs. They run great. I have one ridiculously large database with 23 gigs of data and I have yet to use it on my Air. It is too large for my USB and I do not want to put it on my Air's SSD. I will first buy one of these: Kingston Digital HyperX 3.0 DataTraveler (DTHX30/64GB)
I am guessing that it will be slow and that I will need to split it up into smaller databases. I will let you know.

Fair warning: I may be a geek. But when it comes to technology, I am not a Super Geek. There are many people more knowledgeable about DTPO and computers than I. Blogging about these topics is a way to clarify what I think I know and to invite (respectful) feedback. Also, can import my RSS feeds into DEVONthink and my own writings become a part of my database. How fricking cool is that???