Daniel's PageFour Review

PageFour is THE example of understanding a common need and building a product that addresses that need. Simply. Quickly. Intuitively. It gets it right. In spades. If you are a writer or just spend a good amount of time in front of your favorite word processer, take a look at PageFour.

What exactly is PageFour?
Well, PageFour is a writing tool. How you use that writing tool is entirely up to your creativity and individual needs. For aspiring writers working on that next best-selling novel, this is a great tool for building out your chapters and merging them together for that first manuscript. For folks like me that want to keep documentation, notes, planning, journals, and decisions organized in one place, it's a dream! One stop shopping.

How does PageFour work?
Your screen is organized on the left with a list of your Notebooks. Click a Notebook and below you will find a treeview of your Chapters. Click a Chapter and you see all your pages inside. Click a page and the content of the page appears on the right. Create as many Notebooks, Chapters, and Pages as you need. Organize them with an easy drag and drop interface.

And on the right is a capable, but streamlined word processor. Fonts, colors, treatments, bullets, formatting, spell checking. Simple and to the point.

Ok, Why Is This So Great?
For me, the key value is in having all of your writing and information in one place organized in the way I work best. Behind the scenes everything is stored in a portable RTF form. So if you really want to use Microsoft Word for something, your documents are easily accessible.

• Very simple, obvious, and uncluttered user interface
• It focuses on writing and nothing else - and get's it right
• Searching is a breeze; search by page, notebook or across everything
• You can archive your work and rollback whenever you need to - very easily
• It loads in about 2 seconds on my modest laptop - Word takes 21 seconds
• The developer listens is responsive to your questions, comments, and suggestions
• The price point is fantastic for what you get

What Didn't I Like?
That I didn't see this sooner. Ok, there are always things you might want to work differently. But given the purpose of this tool, and the focus it has on its mission, there's not much to ding. But to be balanced, here's a few things to be aware of.

• You're not going to get all the whiz bang of Microsoft Word
• It would be nice to double click a tab to close it, instead of right-clicking to get a menu
• Bullets and indenting needs a bit more polish - the developer may be looking into this
• Sometimes I'd like to be able to spell check a section of text instead of the entire page
• Sadly, it's not caffeinated in any way, so it's pointless to drink it

Bottom Line
You've found what you're looking for if you need a streamlined and snappy tool for writing, keeping notes, and the like. Read the reviews and then try it out - there's a free untimed download. I think you'll be pleased with what you see.

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