What if a developer listened to all the suggestions users had about what an effective personal information manager would be like?  What if that developer worked on refining this personal information manager for five years?  You might wind up with something like Pocket Informant 2005 by Web Information Solutions.  I've taken to calling it the Power PIM.  Read on to find out why.

Managing Your Schedule, Tasks, Contacts and Notes with Power 

For some, the built-in Windows Mobile Calendar, Tasks, Contacts and Notes might be enough.  But there are many of us out there who are just too busy for our own good.  Pocket Informant 2005 brings many features to the table to help you get a handle on your overloaded life.  There are five main views inside of Informant.  Each has many useful refinements over and above what stock Windows Mobile PIM applications can do.

Calendar: 

There are actually five views within the Pocket Informant calendar to help the user see their schedule for the short and long term.  In the short term, the Agenda View shows a color coded timeline at the top of each upcoming day so the user can see what times of day he or she has blocked in with appointments.  Below this daily timeline is a list of appointments with customizable icons and colors for recurring and all day appointments.  Appointments can be dragged and dropped, filtered and deleted from here, among other things.  I found Agenda View to be the most effective view for seeing details about my busy schedule.

The other intriguing view of your calendar included here is the Time Line View.  It allows the user to see different categories of appointments in a side by side, time line fashion.  That way you can balance your work and family commitments or kids' school schedules. 

Other more traditional views include the day, week and month views.  Each view in the calendar portion of Informant is highly customizable.  If something doesn't look or act the way you want it, you can change it.  I was personally very impressed with how much well-organized data could be displayed in each of these views.  A lot of work went into usability in the calendar tab.  It especially looks great on a VGA screen.  Also, the calendar views brought up their data almost instantaneously.  No waiting around watching the wait cursor spin.

Task Management: 

Got enough tasks that setting a priority and a due date isn't enough?  The Tasks tab in Informant 2005 includes the ability to assign A to Z or 1 to 99 priority levels, so you always know what's most pressing.  You can group, filter, sort and categorize your tasks into hierarchies.  This way I can filter down my list of tasks for the office and not stress out about the to-do list from my wife until I get home.  You can even link tasks to individuals in your contacts database.  Tasks can be auto-regenerating so if you've got things that routinely come up, they can be tracked here too.

Contacts: 

Your contacts can be displayed by Informant in all kinds of different sort orders.  In the default display one phone number or email is shown, but this can be customized for each contact, so you see the most pertinent info for each contact first.  Tap on a contact and a complete display of information comes up.  This can even include a photo of the contact and a company logo.  Got a phone edition device or a Bluetooth phone?  Tap the contact's number and it's dialed for you.  For those of us who don't, tap the email address and a new email to that person is created.  Contacts become even more powerful when you link them with appointments and tasks to better keep track of the 'who and what' of daily life.

Notes: 

The notes tab supports viewing and editing of Windows Mobile text notes, voice notes (wav files) and PhatNotes (from PhatWare).  They can be categorized, sorted and filtered and alarms can be associated with them.

Search: 

I've got so much stuff I can't keep track of it all, which is where one of Informant's most powerful features comes in.  The search tab allows for comprehensive searches of all the user's PIM data.  You can adjust many search parameters to help narrow down your results and wildcards are supported as well.  A quick search will even help you find out when your wedding anniversary is.

Conclusions:

I've barely even been able to skim the surface of what Pocket Informant 2005 can do to benefit the user's personal productivity.  To give you an idea, the software comes with an 88 page long manual describing the software's features.  My overall impression is very positive.  I'm always leery about giving a new application access to my vital personal information, but there were absolutely no compatibility problems.  Data access and retrieval was always quick and I never saw any instability while using Informant.

There's a reason Pocket Informant has been around so long, it's one of the best PIM replacement applications available.  And it keeps getting better due to the way WebIS has integrated features based on users' requests.  Informant 2005 revision 3 has also been tested and is compatible with Windows Mobile 2005. 

Final Grade: A

Pros: Polished, user friendly, customizable way to gain control of your calendar, contacts, tasks and notes. 

Cons: There's so much included that it may take some effort to get it configured just the way you want it.

Pocket Informant 2005 revision 3 is available here in the www.pdaBuzz.com software store as well as from other Windows Mobile software resellers.  For more info go to www.pocketinformant.com