NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/comp/os/mswindo/apps/6687

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-06 | 3.8 KB

From: [e-mail] (Marc Clarke)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 19:16:46 GMT
Subject: Re: PIMs for Win3.1 ???
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Ft. Collins, CO
Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!hpscit.sc.hp.com!hplextra!hpfcso!mic
Newsgroups: comp.os.ms-windows.apps
References: <[e-mail]>
Lines: 58

Check out PackRat ver 4.1 from Polaris.

PackRat routinely wins the PC magazine shoot outs of PIMs.  It has: a phone
book (with multiple addresses and phone numbers for each entry); a to-do list
with prioritizations and even time slot assignments (when are you going to do
this to-do?), and a displayed priority queue of overdue to-dos; a contact list
(those phone calls you still need to make) including scheduled contacts (you
have to call him on Friday); a telephone call log (one of the most useful
features of PackRat, since when someone calls you to chat about a past
conversation you can pull up your notes of your conversation(s) with that
person in a matter of seconds); a money manager (inferior to Quicken, which I
use); a flat data base for any application you might like (I use it to manage
my books at work, which my colleagues are always borrowing and forgetting to
return until I nag them); a transparent file interface (probably the most
mind-bending feature of PackRat, this feature lets you look at your agenda,
double click on a meeting, pull out the attached files, and automatically
start up your word processor on your minutes of that meeting and and your
spreadsheet of the costs you were assigned to analyze as a to-do in that
meeting); a time clock function (double click on any activity to start logging
your time against it); a project management feature (inferior to MS Project
for Windows, but still quite capable for managing project with up to maybe 50
sub-tasks).  You can bind anything to anything else in a relationship (a
person to a meeting, a document to a to-do, a cash expenditure to a billed
time activity, etc.).  You can have the phone log keep track of how much time
you talked to a client and compute how much to charge the client for your time
(really nice if you are working on multiple projects with separate billings,
as I often have).

Naturally, you can print out all of your information onto paper, in all of the
currently accepted formats (I use a Day-Timer, and PackRat prints my daily
inserts).  If you use an electronic PIM such as a Sharp Wizard, PackRat has
direct support for uploading and downloading information to/from the Wizard.
A separate company,  Intellilink, markets a product to connect PackRat to a
Cassio B.O.S.S. (which I use).

If you are making a call to some one on your contact list, PackRat can use
your modem to dial the telephone number of that person (and PackRat
understands internal and external phone systems, long distance, access lines,
and country codes).  I use this feature all the time.

I have colleagues who have bought laptop computers just to be able to run
PackRat on the road when they are involved in managing complex projects with
hundreds of people to contact and coordinate.  I am strongly considering the
purchase of a laptop for just this purpose myself.

All of the various features (phone book, agenda, to-do list, phone log, etc.)
contain serarchable fields.  So, I can search my PackRat database for all
phone conversations (with anyone) about the topic "IBM PC clone" or "MS-DOS".
You can specify multiple search keys with various Boolean AND and OR
conditions, or even date ranges (I want all the conversations about "MS-DOS"
in the last month).

PackRat 4.1 requires MS Windows.  I run it at work on a junky 286/8 Mhz
machine running MS Windows 3.1 and MS DOS 5.0.  Slow, but quite workable.  A
more powerful computer makes it more usable.  I have encountered street prices
as slow as US$160.00.

Check the magazine reviews of PIMs.