If you've been searching for a fast program that can store your entire address book, your huge collection of lawyer jokes, and all the information you've culled from the Net, your magic lamp has just arrived. With Casady & Greene's InfoGenie -- a simple free-form data-management program flexible enough to store virtually any kind of information -- you can get your data in order faster than a speeding magic carpet.
The "Un-database." InfoGenie is actually neither a true personal information manager (PIM) nor a true database program but rather a cross between the two. As a result, InfoGenie is more versatile than a traditional PIM and can adequately fill most users' database needs, with powerful searching across thousands of records in just seconds.
When you open InfoGenie, you choose from two ways to organize your data. You can set up structured fields or simply store your information in a free-form manner. To-dos, class notes, e-mail, magazine articles, and Net finds, for example, are suitable for an InfoGenie free-form data file, whereas data requiring greater structure -- such as a mailing list, product catalog, or household inventory -- can be organized just as easily in fields. From here, adding, deleting, and scrolling through records is simple.
Cool Features. InfoGenie's other cool features include the ability to globally search and replace text strings in a data file, open multiple files simultaneously, import a variety of e-mail files, share files over a network, print envelopes and labels, and even automatically open user-specified files when you launch InfoGenie.
Thanks in part to an easy-access tool bar that stores key functions and to the program's ability to display data in a basic, list, label, or envelope view, InfoGenie is easy to master. However, we would have liked to see our data displayed in more than one view at a time. Furthermore, InfoGenie can't do some kinds of conditional searches, such as finding records that do not contain a word, and it can't save frequently performed searches and sorts, perform calculations and summaries, or create layouts -- all of which other Mac database programs can do.
Despite these limitations, the InfoGenie program is a solid, trusty tool for tackling the burgeoning Information Age. It fulfills the three primary data-management wishes: easy storage, simple retrieval, and speedy searches. If those are all you require, you'll need to look no further than InfoGenie in order to stay organized.
InfoGenie 1.0.4 Very Good (4 of 5 mice) / Price: $79.95 (list). Company: Casady & Greene, Salinas, CA; 800-359-4920 or 408-484-9228. Reader Service: Circle #414.
