Official Gadgeteer Hands On
Review: Datebk3 by Tom Munch Last date revised: 02/14/99 |
This is the first in what I hope will be a series of software reviews for Palm devices,
as well as others that have tickled my fancy & proven to be useful. There are some
great & prolific software writers out there. Unfortunately, they don't all write for
the same platform. As a result I have been using different devices for different purposes.
The Newton is still the very best for straight writing. I'm sitting here outside in the
Rockies this afternoon on a break from my regular job. The Newton keeps up with my writing
just as fast as I can write & think. But the Palm devices are still my passion after
dalliances with the Avigo, the Psion Series 5, a short fling with an Omni Go 100 & an
Everex Associate. So with that peremptory introduction, here is my foray into the
reviewers world. Hopefully, this will help someone out there make a guided choice, &
maybe it will even spur some ideas to even more productive software in the future. Pretty
tall ambitions.
The Palm device has finally arrived, to my mind, with some of the new software that has
been recently released. It has taken two years to get beyond the simple but useful hacks
& into some truly meaty applications. Almost all of my favorites are from shareware
authors & not large commercial houses. That has always been one of the appealing
strengths of the Palm platform. First & foremost in the recent past in my mind have
been the calendar/contact applications. Here is a review of the most ambitious:
DateBook 3.
DateBook 3 by Pimlico Software is a
huge program-both featurewise & in size. The latest version I downloaded is 176K.
That's big enough to worry if you have a PalmPilot Pro with only 1MB of memory. But the
features are also immense. To begin with, DateBook 3 has full support for todos in the
datebook--both built-in from the ToDo database & also DateBook 3's own integrated
todos also known as floating events. And the biggest news is the year view with filters
that allow you to single out a series of events by icons. This is fantastic! Among other
things worthy of mention are: categories, templates for frequently-used items, enhanced
time bars in monthly view, alarm snoozing, &repeated alarm sounds.
Let's look at DateBook 3's screens in detail. The first thing you notice is that the
three icons at the bottom of the screen have now grown to five. Tapping on the third icon
reveals the week view. This is a full agenda view that allows you to see one or two
weeks at a glance. You can include integrated todos or todos from the todo database
in this view. Tapping on the fifth icon reveals the year view.
Day view Week view Year view
A recent Palm-size PC review boasted that the PsPC had the only real year view. Well, move over PsPC because DateBook 3's year view lets you view the first appointment of each day for the entire year. Plus you can set the filter to only show events that correspond to a certain icon that you have previously assigned. This is real scheduling power!
In addition to these two new views, there are added new features to the existing views.
Daily View: allows events with zero duration, blank screen when you have no
events scheduled, hide end times, scroll with the hardware buttons to the bottom/top
of page before changing days, ability to change the "new" button to
appointments, integrated todos, or todo database todos.
Graphic Weekly View: show zero duration events.
Monthly View: breaks schedule bars into hourly segments from 6 a.m. to 6p.m.,
horizontal bar for daily repeating event, larger marker for untimed event, & the
aforementioned icon view.
There are loads of little hidden gems in the menu such as: creating & using
categories as well as making them private, tapping current event icon or pressing DateBook
button to go to today, tapping Saturday twice to go to the following Sunday, templates for
frequent schedule items, ability to copy & paste events, ability to move item ahead
one or seven days quickly
in details box, alarm snooze as well as multiple repeats on each sound at each occurrence.
My only complaint with Datebook 3 is the delayed time in opening the program. To be
fair, I have over 4 years of appointments installed, so I'm sure that slows down the
program quite a bit. It may bother some piloteers that the integrated todos show up
on the desktop as untimed events. I personally like this because it lets me scan my
finished tasks.
There is really more to this program than can be described in this review. Go to http://www.gorilla-haven.org/pimlico to
download a demo & try it out for yourself. When you decide to register it, the
price is $20. Highly recommended! This program is being continuously updated
with new features, so visit Pimlico software often.
Price: $20.00
Pros:
Week view
Year view
Integrated todos
Flexible & always improved
Categories
Cons:
Large size: 176K
Slow with large number of events
Let me know your comments on
the Datebk3. Read what others have to say about this product on the Owners Comment Page |