First look: EndNote X

Endnote has become an important aspect of my research, and I have taken to inputting quotes and entire elements of an article into the "Notes" field, for rapid retrieval in an examination situation. The fact that .pdf files can now be embedded is an important new feature.
As previously mentioned however, Thompson continually charges the same price for new academic users as for long-time academic version upgraders. The boxed upgrade to version X for version 9 users is 99.95. (new users pay $109.95 at my University). In my mind the $10 discount even after having bought several versions in the past is just an absolute insult. I will probably pay the money, but I am very interested in a program that will read and convert endnote files that I can eventually use as a replacement. Either Thompson works harder on customer retention or I will jump ship at the earliest possible opportunity. Here is the headline from the upgrade page:
Download your EndNote Upgrade Online and Save $10 off the boxed upgrade of $99.95! (so the upgrade can actually go as low as 89.95 for a download). still way overpriced.

I'd second the "watch for Zotero" suggestion. This—and hopefully an ecosystem of tools like it that can interoperate—is finally going to be the nail in the Endnote coffin. It has a better data model and GUI, and is standards-based, cross-platform, and open source. I'm betting it's only a matter of time before someone implements a OS X citation processing service that can tie into it.

On that note, if you care about citations in OS X, let Apple know. The technical underpinnings are there to have system level citations objects and processing, so that you no longer must choose one editor or bibliographic database. But if customers don't ask for it, they won't implement it.

I agree with the above criticism of EndNote. I was a user of it since version 1, but gave up on it around version 7 because of bugs, crappy Mac support relative to PC version, and high upgrade cost. I remember chatting with an EndNote rep at a Macworld conference about finally building in support for Japanese and Chinese characters (which it now finally has) and his response was that the market for it would be too small -- "only ex-pats living in Japan". Totally clueless. He had no idea of the numbers of academics working in these languages in the States and elsewhere. I felt insulted and basically said screw you to the whole operation.

Comment 11 is spont on as are many others. What is even more frustrating is now the Endnote "upgrade" cycle will be completely out of sync with the universal version of Word. I've used Endnote for years and have forked over the $99 several times to maintain Word compatibility. I am convinced that they will be asking for more money in 8-9 months (they always lag behind the Word release, and they never never release free patches on the Mac side) simply to keep Word integration intact. Buyer beware.

Endnote has gone from a well-supported product on the Mac to a bug-ridden mess regularly released months after the PC version. It appears that they are now on a one-release-a-year schedule regardless of advances; Endnote 9 was just Endnote 8 with bugfixes; and X's meager new "feature" list includes *renaming of menu commands*. Their proprietary .enl format and a lack of competition is what keeps them in business.

The problem with all the EndNote replacements is they're either based in BibTex, which doesn't help people in the Humanities, or Mac-specific, which means they're no good for collaboration in a PC-centric world. Many of the people I share libraries with can barely manage typing entries, let alone figuring out how to import a CSV or XML file. As soon as Sente comes out with a PC version and support for the new compressed enl file type, I'll switch and recommend the U change the site license. Until then, it's the same old song. A "better" product is not always a more appropriate product, and vice versa. And v.X is a huge step in the right direction.

Wouldnt it be great if all you had to do was show the bacode of a book / journal to your iSight camera and it automatically imported all the bibliographic info to save you typing? :)

EndNote's "upgrades" come about once a year, making it a very expensive package to maintain. I've recently started using Sente, which is far cheaper, and has wonderful features like constantly updating your bibliography in the background so you can see what's new in the field.
EndNote's download times from PubMed are still painfully slow compared with either Sente or Bookends. And the interface is still really klunky.

I'm pretty happy with BookEnds, which already provides good facilities for handling pdfs. I was permanently turned off of Endnote by their horrible corporate behavior. I "upgraded" to Endnote 8 only to find it unuseable due to bugs. I patiently waited for the inevitable 8.01 version only to find that they never released one, although they did for the PC. Instead they released Endnote 9 and demanded another $300. I vowed never to use Endnote again and have not looked back. Bookends does everything I need and has excellent support and is much more reasonably priced.

Along these lines, the Center for History and New Media at GMU will soon be releasing a new Firefox extension that does bibliographic notetaking plus a whole lot more - keep an eye on http://www.zotero.org for more details...