Solo Developer Success

As much as I love Priacta’s Total, Relaxed Organization and their TROG Bar utility, I hate how much memory Outlook takes up.  I decided to do some hunting for a replacement Personal Information Manager that meets the TRO requirements and has a much smaller memory footprint.  After giving Essential PIM Pro and WinPIM a try, I settled on WinPIM.  Here’s why.

But first, the bad news

Well, not really bad, just some of the quirks that makes WinPIM not quite as nice as Outlook.  The first is data entry, especially date fields.  WinPIM does not have the date logic that Outlook has.  You have to enter a complete date or use the date calendar pull down to select a date.  WinPIM doesn’t recognize quick data entry like “today”, “tomorrow”, etc. nor does it allow just entering a day of the month.

Reports are not as nice as Outlook or TROG Bar, especially task list reports.  Task reports automatically include a column for start date, end date, and subject/body.  The Subject and Notes fields always print.  If you’re like me and keep a lot of information in a Task Note, then even printing five items can make for a three page report.

Product support is by email only.  The WinPIM site (www.winpim.com) doesn’t contain a forum, blog, or even a knowledgebase.  I have to wonder how many emails they get that ask the same question or report the same bug.

It’s not free, but it’s not incredibly expensive either.  The WinPIM Personal Bundle which includes WinPIM plus all the sync add-ons is currently priced at $79.95.

Now for the good news

WinPIM is a full Personal Information Manager that almost completely mimics Outlook.  The modules are Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Diary (like Outlook’s Journal), Notes and Email.  Yes, email.  WinPIM supports IMAP and POP accounts and can even connect to gMail.  WinPIM didn’t like my folder naming in gMail, but if you don’t name folders with a colon ( : ), then it shouldn’t be a problem.  WinPIM support said they will have it fixed in the next version.

WinPIM is small enough to run on a USB drive and takes up about 10mb of RAM when running.  Even with over a hundred tasks and about the same appointments, the application loads and refreshes quickly.

WinPIM can sync with Outlook, Windows Mobile (CE), Palm, iPhone and data folders.  This made getting up and running on WinPIM quick and easy.  All I did was sync my Windows Mobile phone with Outlook to make sure everything was up do date, then sync Outlook with WinPIM as a one-way Outlook-overwrites-WinPIM sync.  After purchasing WinPIM’s bundle that included all sync accessories, I was then able to sync WinPIM with my mobile phone.  This didn’t go as easy as expected, there were some duplicated in WinPIM, but it was easy to clean up.

WinPIM has an SDK included with the application.  Just add the WinPIM10.dll as a reference in a VB.NET application, declare some objects and follow the examples on the website.  I was able to create a simple app in about an hour that read all my dated tasks up to today and 0utput to a simple HTML table that looks similar to the Task List Report TROG Bar offers.  If any readers want to see the source code, just post a comment.

WinPIM does support TRO.  That’s the biggie that won me over from Essential PIM Pro.  Essential PIM Pro does not support multiple categories.  WinPIM does, just like Outlook.  WinPIM also allows for hierarchy indentation of Tasks.  This isn’t a TRO requirement, since a Task List is supposed to be kept to one task per project.  But, there are times when I know there are two to five tasks that I need to accomplish to keep the project moving forward.  WinPIM makes it easy to enter them as Sub-Tasks under a parent project task.

Task Category filtering is very powerful in WinPIM since the category list is displayed in the left-hand sidebar.  Right clicking on a category automatically filters the list on only that category.  Since I use my task list for recording all my one-on-one discussion items, this makes it fast and easy when I’m on the phone with my boss.  I just right click on his (1BOSS) category and everything I’m supposed to discuss is the only thing displayed.  When doing my reviews, I can uncheck all my 1Name categories and see only those categories that contain actual actions to be completed.

Tasks in WinPIM can be dragged to the Appointment schedule in the side bar for task scheduling.  Appointments can also be categorized with colors to allow for strategic, non-action scheduling.  WinPIM will mention that a new appointment conflicts with an existing appointment if you already have a strategic calendar item, but it’s only an informational mention and only appears once when you create the appointment.  Editing an existing appointment won’t mention that there’s a conflict.

WinPIM is an actively evolving product.  Looking over the What’s New history in Help, it’s obvious this is a product that receives a lot of attention and support.  They release minor updates about every two months on average and a new major release annually.  They also respond quickly to emails and are eager to keep a customer satisfied.

I’ve been using WinPIM for almost a full week and am very happy with the results.  As a true replacement for Outlook, it’s about as good as you can get.