First-Rate Design On A Desktop - desktop publishing software and other software for small firms - Software Review - Evaluation

Nation's Business, June, 1999 by Tim McCollum

Macintosh users who are looking for an inexpensive and easy way to organize the information on their desktops should consider DragStrip. It provides single-click access to all files, Web addresses, and software applications on a user's desktop by arranging them within desktop icons called palettes.

DragStrip eliminates the need to wade through a cumbersome array of file windows or menus to locate information, files, and programs. Instead, the user creates palettes by dragging files and application icons onto the desired icon. To get a file or application, the user clicks on the appropriate palette and makes a selection from one of its tabbed pages.

DragStrip can be downloaded from Aladdin Systems' Web site. A Windows version is in the works.

InfoSelect (Micro Logic Corp., 201-342-6518, www.rniclog.com); $99.95.

Many longtime PC users swear by Micro Logic's handy and simple InfoSelect personal-information manager. The software has always made it quick and easy for people to store and retrieve contact information such as names, addresses, and phone numbers.

InfoSelect lets users store information in either a free-form database or in a structured form similar to many popular contact-management programs. It also has a calendar as well as scheduling, phone-dialing, and data-sharing features.

The latest version has been enhanced with Internet tools such as data encryption, e-mail sorting and mailing lists, and the ability to go directly to a contact's Web page by clicking on a Web address in the contact database.

One feature of the software lets users transfer information collected from Web pages, e-mail, and PC applications to their contact database by highlighting the data and clicking a button.

Info Select has new information-management features too. Users can view data in grids, use the software to sort and create outlines, and print data for labels.

PageKeeper Pro (Caere Corp., 1-800-654-1187, www.caere.com); $49.

Using the Windows Explorer utility in Microsoft Windows 95 and 98 to locate files is fine if you're a very organized person with a great filing system and an elephant-like memory of the information in each file. For the rest of us, there's Caere's PageKeeper Pro.

PageKeeper Pro document-management software lets users organize and find documents stored on their PCs. The software automatically files documents into folders based on the user's defined criteria. As documents are added, PageKeeper Pro creates an index of files, and it updates the index whenever the document is changed or moved.

To locate a file, the user can search by key words, phrases, dates, document type, or image size. The software then lists documents by their relevance, much as an Internet search engine would. Moreover, users can search for file that are similar to a specific document.

PageKeeper Pro manages documents created on the PC as well as those that are put in via a scanner or are downloaded from the Internet, As a result, the software manages images, word-processing documents, spreadsheets, Web pages, and e-mail.