James Fallows
National Editor, The Atlantic Monthly
 

Zoot is the most interesting and enjoyable program I have come across in years. I rely on it all day long to organize what had seemed an unorganizable mess of research and correspondence. The program is put together with a sense both of whimsy and of attention to the practical realities of the computer-user's life.

Information arrives on my screen every minute of the day, it seems, from every conceivable source, and in every possible format. Zoot allows me to store, classify and retrieve all this information easily. It does all the hard work for me, and it does it smoothly and reliably. And Zoot has a style and elegance seldom found in commercial software. I could just about do my job without Zoot. But it wouldn't be nearly so much fun.

Have you been overloaded with information? Are you afraid of losing or misplacing important information? What about times when you needed information but could not locate it. Do you spend hours trying to find information you needed? Do you stay up late at night worrying about it?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, then Zoot to the rescue. This is the program that has saved me more times than I care to remember! Where can you find a program that can store all your information? Better yet, a program you can customize so that every bit of information is at your finger tips.

I use Zoot for almost everything you can imagine -- from my book notes, class notes, consulting projects, and also important personal information... the sky is the limit as far as what I and others can use the program for. With Outlook synchronization, you can synchronize all your mails, tasks, etc. from Outlook. Why use Outlook when you can use Zoot to store and manipulate information?

Now I can sleep peacefully at night knowing that my information is secure and readily accessible at anytime and any place.

Zoot is the most clever piece of software I've ever used and I consider it indispensable for anyone writing and researching. It grabs information from the Web, MS Word files and other diverse sources, uses its smart features to organize, file and process the material. And when all else fails, Zoot allows me to find the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack in seconds. Zoot also automates what are time-consuming and sometimes frustrating tasks, follows my work methods and adapts to them. Now that I've got Zoot, I couldn't get along without it.

I've had the current version of Zoot since November 2005. The more I use it, the more I like it. And I like it a lot. I've looked for years and years and have tried innumerable programs - all the organizers, outliners, visual outliners, indexers, etc.

This is the first program that helps you store information in so many logical ways, and yet you can find what you need, or what you thought you remember from way back when.

It allows you to capture things and organize later logically without being overwhelmed by detail. I have imported years of notes. I can actually find things I want. I had a huge task to complete that I've thought about for 4 years, with lots of possible ideas. How does one organize that? Zoot is the answer. It takes several hours to learn to get it. And then you got it. Over time, as I asked - I wonder if there's a way to do... there was always a way.

It's a superb achievement. It's the most underrated program I've ever seen in 20 years. It allows you to capture and find everything. It allows you to categorize one item in multiple ways. It's eminently practical, useable, and useful.

Zoot allows me to collect text from myriad sources, including e-mail messages, electronic newsletters, the Web, and online services, instantaneously and in the background. It automatically titles the clippings and, based on user-defined criteria, will automatically sort them into separate "notebooks". It allowed me to replace all of the miscellaneous small text files which used to inhabit my hard drive. It is capable of handling huge volumes of text with apparent ease. It allows me to quickly search for and find that "note on the Ebola virus that I know I have somewhere", through multi-megabytes of text, in under a minute. Now that I have it, it is indispensable.

I use Zoot daily as a storage place for all online information that I want to keep for later referral. In my day-to-day practice as an IT-consultant I receive much information that could be of use somewhere in the future. The fast search is a great help in finding information I know I must have somewhere. Zoot also enables me to create (and fast) summaries of a specific subject from different sources on my hard disks.

Forget my desk and desktop. My mind is not nearly as organized as Tom Davis's. By submitting myself to the powerful logic of Zoot, I not only discovered the best way I know to create and tap databases for book research, but discovered the clean pleasure of controlling information that previously swamped my office, desk and life. To the seven habits of highly effective people add an eighth -- zooting.

My copy of Zoot has been integral to the writing of two books (and holds material for several being planned) and a host of feature articles. I have to wonder how I got on in pre-Zoot days. My Zoot databases are filled with information - megabytes of web pages, emails, transcripts of taped interviews, jottings from notebooks and other clutter - that would otherwise be spread incoherently over my hard drive, shelves and filing cabinet. I don't know of anything that gets information in and out of a searchable database with such simplicity and style. The Zooter clipping feature allows me to easily ransack the Web and other sources for information every time I start a new project, the "Smart" folders save on a stack of filing, and the superb Search options mean that nothing goes unscrutinised in Zoot - or my entire hard drive - when I'm looking for something. The interface is clean and intuitive, and the program seems immune to the crashes and data-loss problems that afflicts other software in our lightning-prone location. All this makes Zoot the most indispensable piece of software that I have.