When in the dark ages before the advent of the Personal Computer the elegant lady carried a handbag, the just as elegant gentleman would shoulder a personal organizer of roughly about the same weight and size, leather bound, containing all the information now combined in any gizmo that justly would be called a Personal Information Manager. This status symbol has now been replaced by electronic devices such as Personal Digital Managers (PDS), SmartPhones, iPhones and last but not least, the PC or your notebook.
A Personal Information Manager, or short PIM, is an application designed to help you stay atop of events, tasks, appointments, and meetings. It will also help you to organize the flow of information contained in emails, notes and any other documents – printed or electronic such as web pages. You expect the program to assist you reliably in storing and most of all infallibly retrieving the information completely and accurately when you need it.
What does a Personal Information Manager (PIM) do?
Basically you expect the software to allow you to manage all possible entries by setting a certain date, a specific duration, a start/end date, a repeating occurrence and reminders, notifications and alerts.
- Calendar – covers the chronological aspects of your life. Anything that is related to a certain date and time in the year. Events, tasks, appointments, and meetings belong here, you expect a graphical display of the calendar, depicting all your entries nicely, and allowing you to use your mouse to move, alter, or delete any item.
- Tasks – everything you need to do. Both as a list and as a separate item, and of course, you want to find that task as an entry in your calendar. To make it a winner, the software should offer you a feature to mark the state of completion and some sort of categorizing.
- Notes – have a one and only place for all the things you need to remember, most comfortably done in a tree/folder view
- Contact - collect all your addresses with ample fields for all the data you want to collect