I wrote a fairly lengthy explanation in my return-request email as to why I was returning NeatDesk, but I don't think the recipient at The Neat Company cared very much, so I'm posting a copy of my response here:
I was initially very excited about NeatDesk, as I expected that it would be very useful in scanning large batches of paper and running OCR on everything that wasn't hand-written to assist in searching through the hundreds of pages of information that I have for each of my classes. I started out by importing several PDF files from my desktop just to see how things worked. After about 20 minutes, the program had already crashed twice, and I had found several bugs and other issues that I thought should be addressed. I started writing these things down with the intent of providing The Neat Company with a detailed list of issues that I thought should be addressed.
At this point, I was beginning to feel somewhat disenchanted, my hope wasn't lost until I began using the scanner. Again, I was able to give the benefit of the doubt regarding the problems I was experiencing with the document-feeder, but after viewing the quality of the scanned images, I decided that this product would have to be returned. I assumed it had to be due to a calibration error (even though I had followed the instructions and scanned the included slip of paper before scanning anything else) so I tried recalibrating the scanner, again with the included slip of paper and then again later with a blank sheet of paper. Without fail, the scans were full of streaky-looking artifacts that were very distracting and even impairing to the documents' readability.
If you would like to see for yourself, I have posted several examples of NeatDesk scans along with corresponding scans from my Samsung all-in-one. You can view the images on there own in a new tab or window to see them at full resolution, or click on the link to PDF of all of the images.
Example 1:
The first page came from the Samsung. The second and third pages came from the NeatDesk scanner. Notice the elongation of the second page: this was the result of my first scan attempt. I don't know why this happened; the document passed through the feeder just fine and was the only sheet being scanned at the time. The third page is the result of rescanning the document.
Example 2:
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Again, the first page is from the Samsung and the second page is from the NeatDesk scanner.
As I mentioned before, there were several issues that I encountered in the first 90 minutes (after which I gave up) of using NeatWorks that I found to be somewhat disappointing. I'll try to describe them for you as best I can in hopes that it may assist you should you try to address them. Note that since all of these issues pertain to all item types, I shall cite examples that use a "document" type for consistency.
Potential bugs:
• Double click to open a document in its own window. Click "Document", located in the orange bar at the top of the inspector view. Now click on "All Fields > Create or Modify Fields..." Nothing happens.
• Select multiple items (contacts, documents or receipts) and attempt to change the items' type by clicking "{item type}" in the colored bar of the inspector view. Only the first of the selected items is modified. This is inconsistent with the behavior of the items' fields which, when modified applies to every selected item. Instead, one must click "Edit > Item Type > {item type}" to change the type of all of the selected items.
• After importing a PDF document, I wanted to run OCR on all of its pages. However, clicking "Edit > Reanalyze" did nothing. I tried this multiple times on several documents of varying lengths. The only solution was to double click to open the document in its own window, then click "Reanalyze" on every single page of the document. (In the off chance that it would make a difference, I tried setting the scanning option to "Full" OCR before clicking "Reanalyze", but this didn't change anything.)
Lacking functionality/content:
• My main reason for purchasing NeatDesk was to help me get organized. Ironically, I found that this was far more difficult to do with NeatDesk than it was even in Finder. At least in Finder I can create folders and subfolders to maintain a hierarchical structure that allows me to quickly locate items that are related to one another. The closest thing I found to this in NeatWorks was the "smart collection", which brings me to my next point.
• The smart collections were far from what I was led to believe they were. I was expecting the same functionality provided by "smart folders" in Finder, "smart playlists" in iTunes, "smart mailboxes" in Mail, "smart groups" in Address Book and Xcode, "smart albums" in iPhoto and Aperture, "smart collections" (funnily enough) in Papers, etc. Instead, I found that the smart collections had very little flexibility and did not allow you to customize your search criteria. Instead, one must search by text in the document or by values for a specific field.
• There should be a field type that allows for multiple values. I needed this almost immediately when I was importing a paper with more than one author. Following this same idea, you might implement a "Keywords" field like what is found in Aperture.
• There should be an easy way to manage the fields that are displayed by default in the inspector. Many of the fields were of no use to me, and to fill in the fields that were relevant, I had to click "Document > All Fields > {field}". This became very inconvenient very quickly.
• I didn't have complete dates for some of my documents, but I did know the years in which they were created. When I tried in input only the year in the date field, NeatWorks automatically filled in the current month and date, too. This was actually very annoying, as there was no way to stop it except by going to "Preferences" and changing "Date Format" to "%Y". However, this affects all dates. So, I tried creating my own field. First, I tried creating a date field with a format string of "%Y" (you'd think it would work like it worked from "Preferences") but it kept truncating the dates to two digits, even if I put something like "%4Y". Next, I tried making an integer field, instead. However, there was no way to make the automatic comma disappear, so the years looked like "2,009". I soon gave up on that one.
• When I first started up the program, I expected to be able to either drag or use a file chooser to select an entire directory in which my pre-existing PDFs are stored, at which point NeatWorks would propagate through the file hierarchy searching for file-types it understands and adding them to either the "Inbox" or some particular collection. This is just like in iTunes when you click "File > Add to Library..."
Information:
• There is no where near enough information on the website to give someone a good idea of what they're purchasing (refer to my "smart collections" point, above). There should be more screenshots, a detailed user manual available, and if you really want to be helpful, a trial version of the software (maybe you could just take out the ability to save documents/libraries in the trial version; it would still be helpful).
• Where is the documentation for custom formatting? I couldn't find this (and several other things) in the help files (which is where I expected it).
Things you might consider:
• When I select text in a document and drag it into one of the inspector fields, I expect that field to be populated by the text I selected, not the entire line in which the text was located.
• It's difficult to read "Contact" against the dark-red stripe at the top of the inspector view. Perhaps you could use a lighter color or make the text white.
I still think that NeatDesk has a lot of potential and could be a great way to help people migrate from the mountains of paper lying around their homes and offices to a digital archive using a smart, intuitive program like what NeatDesk strives for. I hope that you will seriously consider the things I have mentioned and if things improve, perhaps I will give NeatDesk another try. Thanks.
