Hire a software secretary - evaluation of eight personal information management applications - includes related article on purchasing PIMs - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, Feb, 1997 by Philip Albinus

We Test Top-Selling Tools That Organize Your Contacts and Appointments

Look around your desk. You have a phone book, notepads, Post-it notes littering your office with phone numbers, and an unruly file with business cards stapled to Rolodex cards. It's time to stop this paper madness and organize those names, addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail notes with a PIM (personal information manager). Until recently, PIMs were considered a poor man's contact manager. But lately, this software category has adopted high-end features, such as mail merge, data synchronization, and the ability to link records, that were once only found in contact managers. At the same time, contact managers have adopted the simpler interfaces of PIMs. While there was once a wide gulf between the two different application categories, now they're only separated by price and a few features.

Since most PIMs resemble day-planners, the mark of a well-designed one is its ability to allow newcomers to jump right in without consulting the manual. It's very easy to install any of the PIMs we review here and then perform basic schedule and contact-management tasks without first running the tutorial. The address book, scheduler, and to-do lists are so well designed and intuitive that you'll be entering client data only minutes after installing the software. But for performing mail merges, data synchronization, and linking one contact to another, be prepared to read the technical manual. How We Selected We chose

the top-selling Windows and Macintosh PIMs based on sales figures from PC Data, a computer industry analysis firm based in Richmond, Virginia. We included a few new programs that aren't on the list but warrant mention. We didn't include programs that we reviewed in the August 1996 contact manager roundup (see "Make the Perfect Pitch," page 82).

How We Tested Once you begin using a PIM, it becomes an integral part of your business day. To measure each program's usability, we put our PIMs through a variety of tests that stress basic functions, such as entering a contact's name, address, telephone number, and other data; planning events with the scheduler; and taking notes in the program's notebook. For more complex tests, we performed searches using the data filter and created a mail merge with either our or the PIM's built-in word processor. To give each PIM the same set of contacts, we tried importing data from an Ecco Pro 3.0 for Windows contact manager database that contained more than 900 names and addresses. We discovered that this was the toughest test in the entire roundup; some programs imported the Ecco Pro file with ease, but most couldn't negotiate the native format. Since most people start out with a PIM and later graduate to a contact manager or database, we paid much more attention to a program's interface and feature set than to how well it imported data.

AnyTime Deluxe

Rating: * 1/2

WIN 95 / WIN

Although it's the least powerful PIM by far in this guide, AnyTime Deluxe has its charms, one of them being its ease of use. Despite its lengthy manual, you can jump right into AnyTime Deluxe to enter addresses, appointments, and to-dos. When you launch the program, you find yourself in the Day Planner, or scheduler, mode, which displays the current day with a to-do list on the right-hand side.

Other PIMs sport a crowded interface, but AnyTime Deluxe has a friendly look and feel with large, colorful icons. The Address Book is pared down and handles only basic contact information. Other PIMs handle a contact's address with one field for street address, a second for office suite or apartment number, a third for city, a fourth for state, and a fifth for zip code, but AnyTime Deluxe holds all of this data in a single field. This setup may make it difficult to perform, say, an individualized mail merge, which uses the specific address fields from your PIM in a word processing document.

Sending a general letter to a contact, which only requires an address header, is a breeze thanks to the minimalist word processor in the NoteBook section. Simply click on the client's contact name, hit the right mouse button, select Copy Special, and choose Letter Heading. Go to the NoteBook area (or your own word processor), paste the information, and write the letter.

The program doesn't ship with letter templates but you can create your own invoices, payment due notices, and thank-you notes. However, each letter is saved within the NoteBook section and can't be attached to a contact. When we wanted to write another thank-you letter to a different client, we had to either begin all over again or find a previous letter and paste in the new name and address. And if typos are troublesome, AnyTime Deluxe can't help you: It doesn't have a spell-checker.

Although we weren't particularly impressed with AnyTime Deluxe, we liked its simplicity. It's perfectly suited as a family phone book and appointment manager, but we prefer other PIMs for managing a small business. If you have fewer than 20 clients and don't plan on performing complex searches or mass mailings, this is a fine program. But if your business grows, you'll certainly outgrow AnyTime Deluxe.