I have used Zotero for my [part time] PhD and found it a great tool (I submitted last week). Whilst I love it, its a bit cranky, and it's a shame it doesn't have things that would clearly elevate it to the level of (or beyond) others like endnote and the elephant in the room of Mendeley:
- doesn't play nice with cloud storage - seems you should be able to just pick your cloud provider and let it sync up. Instead if you try and use cloud storage it'll most likely corrupt your library
- because of the above unless using their storage, it's hard to make work accross multiple computers (and never even tried on my ipad, which is a shame)
- can't export a reference pack
- interface is dated. I don't mind, but suspect it is intimidating to less technical folk and a bit of a barrier to entry (Mendeley is much more accessible)
- does require plugins and fiddling to get the most out of it, some of which seems unnecessary (why are they not in the main program?
Still, I've no regrets in choosing it in 2013, and think it's a fantastic piece of software. Hopefully it keeps on developing, and becomes the de facto standard :-)
Sync your metadata with Zotero but the files in the cloud - you just need to make sure your settings are compatible between machines (storage locations etc).
That's what I do, but it took a while to get there.
Since I would say 80% of people have some level of cloud storage now (University, employer, personal), there should be a simple setting to pick one, and the location. Make it easy for people and win users!
Still, I've no regrets in choosing it in 2013, and think it's a fantastic piece of software. Hopefully it keeps on developing, and becomes the de facto standard :-)