Claiming to be the most advanced contact manager for the Macintosh, Full Contact certainly gives this claim a run for the money. Combining a calendar and sophisticated contact database, Full Contact's multiple modules give you access to daily, weekly, and monthly calendar views, customizable contact windows, a word processor and a terminal emulator for accessing online services.
The program lets you dial your phone directly from a database, but, more impressively, any new event (such as a phone call, to-do, or appointment), may be created by simply dragging the person's name to the appropriate area. Drag the name to the phone dialer, for example, and your modem calls that person's number. Drag it to Wednesday on the calendar and a new appointment is automatically entered.
Full Contact also lets you link related items. Drag a contact name, for example, onto a calendar event, such as a meeting, and the name is added. Any item can be connected to anything else.
The contact database itself is customizable, and you can set up a number of "filters" to sort information that you need for a specific purpose. For example, if you often need to view all contacts who live in California and work for a media company, Full Contact lets you set up this filter so that you don't need to do a complex search every time.
Those of you with listings of multiple people at one company will appreciate Full Contact's ability to link more than one person to a company, much like Rae Assist does (see "Get Time On Your Side" in our February issue). This saves data entry time since you only type the company information once. This is also helpful if the company moves: again you need only chang information once.
Unfortunately, as much as I liked the product, I often got out-of-memory messages if I tried to open Full Contact after opening other applications, even if I closed all but one other application. Why? Full Contact uses RAM-based technology that allows for quicker data access, rather than having to wait for your computer to access information from the hard-disk drive. If I opened Full Contact first, then I was able to run three or four additional applications. This is more than an annoyance, especially since the company gives a minimum RAM requirement of 1 MB, recommending 2 MB. That's enough if Full Contact is all you run. I have 8 MB on my IIci and feel that most people will want to go in and out of numerous applications without having to quit one to open another.
The program includes a notes functions and a well-endowed word processor that includes the capability to import PICT files (for your business logo or other images) and drag-and-drop mail merge functions. And while you should stick to better communications software (such as Crosstalk for the Macintosh, or Microphone) the program's terminal emulation serves in a pinch if you spend a lot of time on text-based online services or bulletin boards.
If managing a lot of people and events is integral to your business, Full contact could be all you need. At $169, it's a good value. If you're short on RAM, though, add some chips before you buy.
