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JAN.-08/99
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When I came across a program called "HPC Customer Manager" on the Home Page of Boma Software, I thought I'd found a solution that would help me manage my rapidly growing customer contact list more efficiently. Unfortunately, the software program was a major disappointment, delivering far less functionality and fewer features than the Windows CE Pocket Outlook Calendar application.
HPC Customer Manager is designed to be a business information organizer that you can use to keep track of your customers' information like their company address, phone and fax number, and web site address.
On the surface, the program has a well laid-out interface for inputting your customer contact information. But even the most cursory glance shows that it lacks a number of important fields. Where, for example, can you input your customer's Mobile Phone number or their home email address? Contacts gives you far more options got inputting additional types of customer information.
HPC Customer Manager also gives you the option of adding in the names of other people working in the same company. Again, on the surface this looks like a good idea. But the Contacts application
allows you to sort entries by categories and automatically inputs the address of any additional individuals working for the same company.
By far the weakest feature of the program, however, is that you can only export your contact information to your desktop or notebook PC in txt. format. As a result, you would have to spend extra time engaged in the laborious process of copying and pasting the information to your PC's database program.
I learned a couple of important lessons from reviewing HPC Customer Manager: Don't judge a software program by its title; and always download a free evaluation whenever possible. Otherwise, I'd have wasted twenty-five hard earned dollars on this poor excuse for a contact management program.
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Reports on CNet and other Internet news sources that Compaq is planning to launch a Windows CE Palm-size PC with a color display this spring are great news for business users of Windows CE.
One of the great strengths of the Windows CE platform is the growing number of leading brand name hardware manufacturers that are bringing Handheld and Palm-size PC products onto the market. Increased competition between these vendors will result in a faster pace of innovation, a greater variety of features, and ultimately a wider choice of solutions for business users.
The introduction of Palm-size PCs featuring color LCDs will also bring a number of important benefits to the business user. Most notably, the screen will make viewing and inputting information on a Palm-size PC device a much more comfortable experience than on a monochrome LCD, particularly when browsing the Internet and reading Mobile Channels content. I can attest to this from my own personal experiences with the HP LX620 Handheld PC.
On the other hand, published reports do indicate that Palm-size PC devices with color displays will be larger in size and have lower battery life than current monochrome devices. And of course, they will be more expensive.
But again, that is one of the main benefits of Windows CE. If you want a lower-cost monochrome Palm-size PC, you can select from a wide range of devices from Casio, Everex, Philips, and other smaller vendors. And if you want to wait for a state-of-the-art color machine, devices from Compaq, Everex, Philips and HP will soon be on the way.
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There are times when I seriously question the wisdom of trying to balance the demands of running this web site with the increasingly heavy requirements of my full-time job. Over the past two weeks, I've barely had the time (or the energy) to generate my Windows CE Business Solutions Task list -- let alone sit down at either my Handheld PC or desktop PC and write materials for the site!
I would like to apologize for my failure to update the side, and promise -- barring another unforeseen firestorm in the office -- that from now on I will do a better job at keeping the commitment I have made to making the Windows CE Business Solution Home Page the number one resource for business related Windows CE information on the Internet.
Actually, my experiences over the last two weeks have taught me a lot about myself. The most important lesson was that I mustn't over-commit myself (and my staff) by setting unrealistic goals for projects. Another was that no matter how sophisticated the tools that you have on hand are, you still have to rely on people to make sure that the project tasks are efficiently executed.
It's very easy to write down a to-do item and set a deadline for someone using the Windows CE Tasks application; it takes a lot more time and energy to sit down with that person and clearly explain exactly what you require them to accomplish and why it has to be finished within such a short time frame!
In a strange sort of way, that's one of the reasons why I'm happy to be back working on my website. If things get out of control and I start missing my deadlines again, the only person I can blame is myself. And instead of having to spend all my time pushing and prodding other people to get things moving, I can sit down at my keyboard and start doing something about it!
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When you buy shrink-wrapped software from a store, you never quite know whether you are going to like the application or even find it useful -- unless of course you are buying an upgrade. Fortunately, many of the leading third-party Windows CE software vendors let you download trial versions of their applications from their websites so that you can try them out before dusting off your credit card. Here is a brief guide to some of the software vendor sites you can visit to get your "Try Before You Buy" Windows CE software.
Ilium Software's home page at www.iliumsoft.com is, in my experience, one of the easiest software manufacturer's sites to download trial versions from. The company not only provides a lot of good information about its products such as eWallet, ListPro, and Keep Track, but also lets you download 30-day trial versions of all these products by clicking on a big blue button at the bottom of each product page.
As an additional benefit, Ilium doesn't even require you to provide your email address or other contact details before letting you download their software. While in principle I don't object to providing vendors with this type of information, I certainly appreciate not having to spend five minutes filling out long forms and waiting for the web site to process it. So far, I have downloaded four applications from the Ilium home page, and experienced no download or software installation problems. In short, I am a very satisfied customer and will keep on going back to their site to look out for new products in the future.
Applian Software also allows you to download 30-day trial versions of some -- but not all -- its software products, such as CoolCalc and QuickWallet. However, some of the features in the programs are disabled. In addition, to get your software the company requires you to fill in a small form, giving your first and last names and email address so that they can include you in their mailing list.
Another company that provides evaluation copies of selected software programs is bSQUARE. They also require you to fill out a long and detailed questionnaire before downloading the application. Acceptable in my book, but a long and tedious process all the same.
A number of other software companies also provide free trial versions of their software download, and they are listed in the table at the end of this article. Of course, there are other websites from which you can download freeware, shareware, and upgrades or add-ons. But I think the safest option is always to go to the software vendor's site first and see if you can download the program from there. That way, you are much more likely to receive immediate technical support should anything go wrong with your product download or installation.
Downloading evaluation copies is a great way of checking out software applications before deciding to buy them. The only problem I have with it is keeping track of the expiration dates of all the evaluation programs I have downloaded so I don't lose any data I have inputted. Perhaps some enterprising software vendor will develop an application to do this for me -- with a 30-day evaluation period of course.
Windows CE Software Vendor Free Trial Download Policies
| Company | URL | Free Download | Registration Required |
Comments |
| Anywhere Consulting | http://hometown.aol .com/ anyware/wce/ index.htm |
Beta Testing Program | Y | |
| Applian | www.applian.com | Selected versions | Y | 30 Day Limit; Some Features Disabled |
| BSQUARE | www.bsquare.com | Selected products | Y | 30 Day Limit |
| Ilium | www.Iliumsoft.com | Y | N | 30-Day Limit; |
| Orbworks | www.orbworks.com | Selected Products | Y | 45-Day Limit |
| Boma Software | www.bomasoft.com | Y | Y | 30-Day Limit |
| Burr Oak Software | www.burroak.on.ca | Y | N | 30-Day Limit |
| DeveloperOne | www.developerone.com | Y | N | 21-Day Limit; Some Features Disabled |
| Evolutionary Systems | www.evolutionary.net | Selected Products | N | |
| Odyssey | www.odysseyinc.com | Y | N | 30-Day Limit |
| Queen Image | www.queeenimage.com | Selected Products | N | Some Features Disabled |
Please note that this list only covers sites I personally have visited. It is not intended to be exhaustive.
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Microsoft Pocket Outlook Tasks is a great application not just for managing your daily "To Do" lists, but also for setting your priorities and sticking to them. In fact, I've come to like Tasks so much that I now rely on it to manage the maintenance and creation of content for this web site. Here are a few pointers on how I use Tasks to do this.
As the Windows CE Business Solutions Home Page becomes bigger and more complex, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to manage the creation and posting of content for it. There are only 24 hours in one day -- and I spend at least ten of those in the office! -- so I have to be very ruthless in the way I set priorities for which tasks I absolutely need to accomplish every day and which tasks I can schedule for later, particularly weekends. I find Tasks an ideal application for enforcing this level of self-discipline; simply having a list of things I need to do written down on my Handheld PC makes me more likely to finish them!
To set my priorities for the week, I sit at my desk for about half an hour every Sunday night and list down all the tasks I need to accomplish. The first stage of this process is relatively easy, because I list down all the recurring items I have to complete every day, namely the CE Business Journal and CE Tip of the day.
Inputting these items into Tasks is pretty simple. I write in a very basic description such as CE Tip, select the Starts and Due dates, and set the priority as High because these are the most important tasks to do every day. I never bother choosing from the recurring items options because I think this feature is pretty pointless and neither do I set alarms for the same reason. If I have an idea of what I will write about that day, I will jot down a few words in Notes, and then I categorize the task under Business Solutions.
When I've finished doing this, my Tasks list is already beginning to look very crowded and I am already confronted with some of the reality of what I have to complete during the week.
In the second stage, I list down the items that I must do at least once per week. These include the weekly email newsletter, articles for the Personal Productivity Solutions and Enterprise Productivity Solutions sections and a book review. Normally, I am fairly relaxed in the deadline I give myself for these tasks, allowing myself until the following Sunday of the week to complete them. However, I do generally write down the subject of my proposed article so that I can do the necessary research or testing for it whenever I have spare time during the week.
Last but not least, I add in a few "nice to do" items, which are ideas I would like to follow up on when I have time. With these I don't even bother specifying the start and due dates; I simply write down a Task title, make a few quick notes, and set the priority as Low. Often these ideas come to nothing because of lack of time, but sometimes I will use them for entries in the CE Business Journal or Personal/Enterprise Productivity articles, so they don't entirely go to waste.
With my Task list complete, I now have a clear idea of what I need to accomplish in the coming week. And even though in the cold dark of light of Sunday evening the list looks pretty forbidding, at least I know what's in store for me.
More importantly, it gives me a concrete way of measuring my progress with the web site every day. Once I complete a task, I take great and not entirely undeserved pleasure in tapping the status box and seeing the check mark appear. "What gets measured gets done" is an old cliché hawked by any management consultant worth their salt. And using Tasks, I have learned that this cliché contains more than a grain of truth.
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Franklin Organizers. Spiral notebooks. Post-It notes stuck on your PC's monitor. We all have different ways of reminding ourselves of important tasks and appointments, and it's certainly not for me to say which method is the best one. But after using Windows CE devices for nearly a year, I finally feel comfortable enough to jettison pen and paper and rely totally on the Microsoft Pocket Outlook Calendar and Tasks applications to manage my "To Do" lists and working schedules.
Making this transition wasn't easy. Old habits die hard, and when arranging a meeting with someone over the telephone the natural thing to do was (and still is) grab a pen and scribble the time and location down on the nearest piece of paper on my desk. Also, at least to begin with, I wasted more time than I'd care to remember trying to work out which items I should input into Calendar and which ones I should include in my Tasks list.
This may sound incredibly dumb (and maybe it is!). But I found it really difficult to work out the difference between the two applications, and it was only thanks to the following explanation in "Windows CE 2 for Dummies" that everything became clear to me: "You create a task for something that you need to accomplish but not necessarily at a specific time; you create an appointment for an event that occurs at a set time." In other words, if you have a review meeting tomorrow at 10:00am then you should list this in the Calendar application, but if you have to prepare a presentation for the meeting you should include this in Tasks.
Now that I understand this distinction, it seems breathtakingly obvious and I wonder why I had to read such an aptly named book as "Windows CE 2 for Dummies" for an explanation of it. But, in part, this issue shows why it's taken me so long to make a complete transition from pen and paper to digital Windows CE. No matter how well designed any device, Operating System, or software application is, it takes a lot of time and effort (not to mention frustration), to learn its quirks and use it to its full potential.
These days, I think Calendar and Tasks are great applications, and wonder how I ever got along without them! In tomorrow's journal, I hope to illustrate how to get the most out of the Tasks application by describing how I use it to manage the maintenance of this web page.
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Having been so impressed with Ilium Software's eWallet application, I decided to try out another of the company's products in my ongoing quest to more effectively organize my life this year. Billed as "an easy way to make, use and re-use all your important lists!", I thought that Listpro would be another "must-have" Windows CE PIM tool. But much to my disappointment, after spending a couple of hours playing around with the program, I came to the conclusion that the product was more a solution looking for a problem rather than a useful application that meets my needs personal information management needs as a business user.
Of course, I wouldn't deny that lists are an important part of both home and business life. It's always a good idea to write down the items you need to buy before going to the supermarket if you want to make sure that you don't return home without a carton of milk or that obscure salad dressing requested by your wife. And in business, checklists are vital to ensure that employees follow standard procedures in the correct manner.
However, I seriously question whether a dedicated list-making program is either necessary or even desirable. It would be just as easy to knock out a quick shopping list using Pocket Word or Pocket Excel. As for checklists governing complex business procedures such as new product releases, it would probably make a lot more sense to develop custom applications linked to a back-end database that would allow managers to monitor the implementation of procedures.
Some of the sample lists included in the application illustrate these concerns far more clearly than I can. For example, while the New Product Release List looks quite useful at first, it would be extremely difficult to manage and track the progress of such a project using this application. You would need a much more powerful program to manage the activities and schedules of the team of the size that would be necessary to implement such a major undertaking.
According to the Ilium Software home page, company staff use the program to list a wide variety of activities ranging from "daily jobs" and "things to pack" to "project planning" and "errands to do". But while I am sure that the program delivers value to them, I think that there are a lot of other applications more suited to these activities; one that immediately springs to mind is Pocket Outlook Tasks. And in any case, I find it difficult to imagine myself ticking off each item on my Handheld PC as I load my socks, shirts and underwear into my suitcase!
You can download ListPro from the Ilium Software home page at http://www.iliumsoft.com/listpro.htm for $24.95. The purchase includes a money-back guarantee and one full year of upgrades. A 30-day free trial version is also available.
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eWallet
If your wallet is anything like mine, it's stuffed with cards of all descriptions, from credit cards, ATM cards, and charge cards to a whole range of frequent flyer club cards, club membership cards, loyalty cards, and discount cards…the list is endless.
Remembering all the different PIN numbers, serial numbers, and passwords for these cards can be a nightmare; but losing your wallet with them all inside would be a complete and utter disaster. Just imagine the hours you would have to waste calling up your banks, credit card companies, and airlines etc in order to replace your lost cards. Not to mention all the extra hassles and frustrations you would have to go through if you didn't have the serial numbers, expiry dates and other important data that would help the companies you call more quickly process your application for a replacement.
As part of my new year's resolution to get my life more organized, I decided that it would be a good idea for me to input and save the information about my cards on my HP LX620 Handheld PC. I surfed the web and looked at a number of suitable applications, before deciding to try eWallet from Ilium Software. One of my main reasons for choosing this was that the program has been given a number of awards by major trade publications such as PC Computing. Another was that a 30-day free trial version can be downloaded from the Ilium website at: http://www.iliumsoft.com.
Downloading the program from the Ilium website took only a few moments, and then it was a simple case of installing the software onto my HP LX620 through ActiveSync, a process which went very smoothly.
One of the first things I liked about eWallet was its clear and intuitive interface. Working out how to use the program was very simple after taking a brief tour of the drop-down menus and the sample cards that are already provided on the program.
To test the capabilities of eWallet, I decided to create a sample card for myself, by tapping File and New Card. The program offers you a huge number of different options for inputting your information, from Bank Account and Credit Card to Passport Information and even Clothes Sizes (particularly useful if you want to buy a gift for your better half the next time you are on a business trip). It also includes General Purpose and Free Form card options that you can customize if none of the other forms are suitable for your purposes.
I chose to create a credit card note, and was presented the following forms to fill in. As you can see from the illustration below, it is very well designed and provides space inputting all the necessary information about the card -- including a drop-down menu featuring the most common credit and charge card types.
Once I had finished filling in all the boxes, I tapped the OK button in the top right hand corner. Then the following screen came into view, showing all the information I would ever need if I ever lost my credit card. It also gives you the option of displaying your PIN number by tapping on the Show PIN button -- a very useful feature when you want to use your card to withdraw cash from an ATM and can't remember the number.
The forms for filling in other types of information are equally well thought-out, and I will be posting some screen shots of some of them when I publish a complete review of eWallet at the end of this week.
Creating a new wallet for your own personal information is also quite straightforward. To do this, first tap File and New Wallet, and then type the name of your new wallet in the Name: box in the bottom left corner of the window.
After tapping OK, you are asked to enter a password for your wallet to protect your information. Please note that the password is case-sensitive, so be careful. According to the information on the Ilium Software website, eWallet's encryption uses the RC4 encryption algorithm with a 40 bit key for advanced security purposes; the trial version does not feature this.
Once you have confirmed your password, then you can start creating cards for storing your own important information in your wallet. You will be required to enter your password each time you want to access the information in your wallet in the future.
eWallet is available in a choice of Windows CE Handheld PC, Windows CE Palm-size PC, and Windows 95/NT for $29.95 from the Ilium website at: http://www.iliumsoft.com. If you already have eWallet on one platform, you can add any others for $10.00 each. All purchases include a money-back guarantee and one year of upgrades.
My initial impressions of eWallet are very favorable, and now that I have used the program to input all my credit card, insurance, passport and mileage club information I think I'll spend the $30 to purchase the program. If you're concerned about securing important personal information on your Handheld PC or Palm-size PC, I would definitely recommend that you try it out too.
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New Years Resolutions
In my case, making new year resolutions is very much a case of hope triumphing over experience. Every 31 December, I dutifully write down my list of resolutions for the coming year, only to swiftly forget them as the mundane realities of my working life take over.
This year, of course, things are going to be radically different. Instead of setting unrealistic goals for myself (like quitting smoking) I am going to focus on one simple and achievable objective: inject some real organization into my life.
Try as hard as I might, I am one of the messiest and disorganized people I know. My desk in my office is piled with mountains of paper, while searching for files on the hard drives of both my work and home computers is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Worse still, no business trip I make seems to be complete without some kind of easily avoidable disaster.
Only last week on a trip to Hong Kong, I managed to check myself into a hotel without an accessible phone jack so I spent three days unable to access my email. And it's only a couple of months ago that I lost my airplane ticket dashing to a catch a connection and was only saved from my folly by the good graces of Singapore Airlines.
I am going to have to be a lot better organized in 1999 if I want to continue juggling the demands of a full-time job with continuously updating the content of this website. Fortunately, Windows CE provides many of the tools that I need to achieve this objective.
Microsoft Pocket Outlook Calendar lets me efficiently organize my schedule. Microsoft Pocket Outlook Contacts enables me to store all the contact details of my friends and business associates. And a number of third-party applications such as eWallet and ListPro provide me with the means to securely store confidential personal and business information on my device and more efficiently track my to-do lists (I will be writing about both these applications later on this week).
Having the right tools is only half the battle, however. I also need to have the self-discipline to use them properly. If I slide into bad old habits and start forgetting to add appointments to my schedule or the contact details of new business associates, then no matter how good my Windows CE device is, it very quickly becomes almost useless.
So the next time someone gives me a business card, I am going to input the data into my device at the earliest possible opportunity. It might seem a lot of bother at the time, but it will mean that I won't have to waste time looking for that person's phone number in the future. And it's with small, seemingly simple steps like this that I will be able to keep my new year's resolutions for a change.
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