I have used Endnote versions 2, 5, and 6. Generally, the higher the number, the worse the program functioned. I had no intention upgrading again, and had switched to Bookends (itself a very good product). However, the lure of cross-platform integration was too strong and I found myself using Endnote 9. After years of suffering through bloated, buggy software, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Endnote 9 seems to have put to rest most of the problems caused (possibly) by shifting to OSX.

The program is fast (I’m using it with Word Office X on a 1.5 GHz Powerbook). To test its speed, I imported 5000 references (including keywords and abstracts) I downloaded from an online database. The file was 6.4 MB, but took less than 4 minutes to import. Even with such a large number of references, it sorts and scrolls quickly. In the year I’ve been using it, it has yet to crash. A welcome feature for multi-lingual researchers is its support for Unicode.

It is not without its quirks, though. When exporting lists of references to my Word document, I find it uses a random mixture of serif and sans-serif fonts, something which is annoying, but not time consuming to reformat. I also find it annoying that when entering information about an online source the URL box is always far enough down on the list that I have to scroll down to find it. It would seem to make sense to have the URL for Web documents near the top, as it’s always included whereas date and author often are not.

Nonetheless, the makers of Endnote are to be congratulated for sticking with the Mac OS and finally creating a solid OSX version of their program.