Review: Pocket Informant 8

This is part 2 of 3 in our Personal Information Manager Smackdown, check back later for the rest of the series. (Part 1 can be found here.)

While the Windows Mobile platform has transformed from a PDA centric OS to the mobile phone/multimedia capable system that it is today, its roots are still firmly planted in the digital assistant world. But the organizational features can be somewhat anemic for the power user, and actually creating and managing your data is difficult at best. In part 2 of this series, I’m going to take a look at another major player in the Personal Information Management market.

In this corner is Pocket Informant...

Basic Details

• Current Version: 8
• Price: $29.95 (from the WMExperts Store - SmartPhone | Pocket PC)
• Compatible With: Touchscreen and non touchscreen devices.

Contacts

Right off the bat I have to mention that Pocket Informant is VERY touch friendly (this review is based on the touch screen version). The Pocket Informant contacts application increases the size of each contact so that you can select it using either the stylus or your finger. Also, there is an optional scroll bar that shows the letters of the alphabet on the right side of the screen, allowing you to click or drag to a position in the alphabet to display the names corresponding to that letter. You also have the option of going into “Touch Mode” which allows you to simply flick your finger or stylus up or down across the screen to scroll (much like Apple’s iPhone). The finger friendly design continues once a contact is selected. Pocket Informant improves on Microsoft’s idea of giving you the different phone numbers for the contact by again increasing the size, and also uses icons to allow you to quickly find the number you are looking for.

The menus in the contacts application further expand the features offered by Microsoft. A quick glance through the menus allows you to change the way that your contacts are listed (the default is a list of pictures). Shortcuts to create other information types using the selected contact (or contacts) are also listed in the menu.

Calendar

The calendar also features a touch mode, allowing you to quickly scroll through multiple days (or weeks) on your calendar. Your calendar can be viewed in a number of different ways, and can be limited by category or through a search filter.

Creating a new appointment is fairly straightforward…but Pocket Informant gives you some added niceties. One example is the ability to add not one, not two, but an unlimited number of Alarms to one appointment. You can even specify what type of alarm it is (i.e. travel time) and specify the amount of time before your appointment for each alarm.

Those users concerned with Security will be interested to know that calendar items can be encrypted and decrypted. This hides both the title of the appointment and the name of the requested attendees.

Tasks

Those of you that use Tasks extensively will appreciate the ability to show a toolbar at the top of the screen to quickly create a new task without advanced details. Templates can also be created to simplify the creation of tasks that require more detail.

Tasks can also be created as recurring or regenerating tasks. Recurring tasks are where the due date is a specified interval (i.e. every Tuesday). Regenerating tasks are where the task should be re-created a specified number of days after the task is completed. The ability to handle both scenarios adds significant flexibility to how you manage your tasks.

The ability to create parent-child relationships with tasks will warm the heart of power users. When in non-touch mode, you can simply drag one task on top of another to create a hierarchy. The real power of this feature is that your progress will be inherited up the tree. For example, if you have one parent and two children, and one of the children is 100% complete, the parent will be 50% complete. The ability to quickly and easily create tasks, and the ability to create a hierarchy (quickly and easily) from those tasks, gives great flexibility and power to the user.

Notes

Pocket Informant’s Notes application simply blew me away. While other applications give you the ability to do standard rich text style formatting and drawing, Pocket Informant goes as far as letting you use a Graph Paper style Background for doing much more advanced note taking. Standard features such as inserting predefined text and doing voice notes are also supported.

Other Features

Journaling is heavily supported in Pocket Informant. The idea behind Journaling (at least in this product) is that if you create a short note (Journal Entry) with each piece of data, you can better manage your life. Everything from contacts to appointments to tasks have the ability to have a Journal entry attached to them. Entries can also be created in a standalone or hierarchical view. Additionally, Pocket Informant features the ability to pop up the Journal entry window following any incoming phone call (on phone enabled devices only of course), allowing you to quickly make notes regarding the call without wasting time tracking down the appropriate application to do so. The ability to synchronize your Journals with the desktop version of Outlook requires Journal Sync, which is a separate product available from WebIs.

Several features supported by Franklin Covey Plan Plus for Outlook such as Daily Tasks, Master Tasks, Projects and others are supported by Pocket Informant.

Summary

Pocket Informant is perfect for power users wanting the largest feature set possible, as well as micro managers looking for something capable of digitally handling the intricacies of their life.