Mendeley Desktop changes the way I manage my collection of PDFs. Before, I often have to manually rename each PDF after opening them, and place the in the appropriate folder. This is really a hassle for me because I still have to track which PDF I have or have not read. Searching also needs to be done using a third-party tool especially if you are searching for an author's name. All these hassles can be solved with Mendeley Desktop.
Currently I have a collection of almost 400 PDF files just for my research alone (although I haven't read most of them entirely yet). You create labels at the left side and drag each PDF from the Unsorted Collection to those labels. You can click the star to mark it as your favorite, and add notes and highlights and annotations while reading. Clicking the "Search by Title" will tell Mendeley to connect to Google Scholar and retrieve the Bibliography details of the PDF. I simply export the details in BIBTEX format, although the information can sometimes be unreliable.
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The PDFs will open as a tab. I usually place some convention notes like
@rrl so I can search which documents were used as part of my Review of Related Literature. All you have to do is to place all PDFs in one folder then tell Mendeley to monitor this folder for any changes. One thing I thing I find missing is the ability to change the font size of the program. I also hope they will add some crash recovery feature that can restore the previously opened tabs.
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While Mendeley is really oriented for research, it can be used to manage any PDF files. It can also sync your collection to the Web for free (up to 500MB?). Another alternative is
Calibre which I only use to convert PDF to EPUB.
Download Mendeley Desktop!
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