About PIM’s
William Brautigam
Are you tired of missing appointments, losing phone numbers, forgetting things to-do or
having "sticky notes" plastered on everything in your life? If the answer to any
of these questions is YES, then you are ready, or maybe overdue is more like it, for a
computerized P.I.M. (Personal Information Manager) in your life. This is often one of the
most overlooked uses of a personal computer. Not using one is sad, because a P.I.M. is not
only easy to learn how to use but will make your life much simpler to manage.
A P.I.M. generally consists of at least three modules: a phone book, appointment scheduler
and to-do list. Different P.I.M.s build on this basic functionality and offer specialized
features and enhancements to satisfy any need. They come in all sizes and forms as well as
varying degrees of complexity. We want to present you with four choices for entirely
different needs to help you sort through the many products available today. We have
investigated over 20 products and feel the P.I.M.s mentioned here are among the best on
the market today at what they do. Everyone offers fast, courteous and easy to reach help
from the software authoring company.
Lotus Organizer
Lotus Organizer is the most popular P.I.M. on the market today and uses a notebook-like
interface that is very user friendly. You can be up and running in less than 15 minutes.
The easy to use manual that comes with the program will answer any questions you may have.
Enhancements over basic P.I.M. features include 2 phone listings for every name, one
business and one personal with unique supplemental information fields, a calls to make
section, and conversation notes list section, a unique Anniversary section, and last but
not least a project(s) scheduler that lets you schedule using time lines. It can be used
by several people over a network if that is your desire/need. The program’s features,
ease of use, and low cost make this a hard to beat choice for the average user.
ECCO
ECCO is a lot like Lotus Organizer but more of it. In lieu of a notebook layout it is
built on an outlining format. Inter-relationships between people, places, things and times
are easy to accomplish using this relatively easy program. The time to learn this program
can be significant, often requiring 40-80 hours to become proficient. Reading the manual
and then preplanning how you want to organize and/or best use your information is highly
recommended. This program is not aimed at the novice computer user but will easily handle
the information management needs of any professional or business organization. You can
easily link information from any other program source, such as your word processor, to any
ECCO managed resource: a person place, thing or event. If you run a multifaceted business,
with many employees, with a lot of contacts and tasks, this is probably the P.I.M. for
you.
Commence
Commence provides basic P.I.M. functionality but what it does better than most is provide
on-line links to other programs and databases. This feature will be of primary interest to
those users having to give price quotes or inventory level information over the phone and
who want to make notes of phone calls and schedule business activities all at the same
time. A mere 20-30 hour learning curve is all that is required to learn this powerful,
cleanly designed program.
Gold Mine
Gold Mine is a salesperson’s dream of a contact/information manager. It offers more
modality and features for tracking your contacts and remembering facts about them. It
offers virtually unlimited search and sorting options to meet almost any need. It quickly
takes-up a lot of room but if you want information available and are willing to put it
into your computer then you have to be prepared to provide the 5-30MB of file space you
can easily occupy. You can provide security for your information and easily take it on the
road with you if you have a notebook computer. If you are in or run a sales organization
this is exactly what you always wanted and didn’t know how to ask for.
This is the first day of the rest of your computing life and surely the best one to make a
decision/commitment to purchase and use a Personal Information Manager. Do not
procrastinate on this decision as it will prove one of the best you’ve ever made
(right after the one about buying a PC). P.I.M.s are quickly becoming the management tools
of choice for people who use their computers regularly, and aren’t afraid of being
organized... electronically.
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