[MRdejong]

Hello,

First time poster, but long time Palm fanatic. I have used a variety of software and systems from my first PalmPilot in 1998 up till now. That leaves me with loads of registrations but non of all that for fills all of my needs. My background: A freelancer with 30 to 40 work related projects for various organizations. A family with four kids and all of there needs and several various hobby related responsabilites. That leaves me on an average base of around 1500 open to-do's (a mix of GTD style and autofocus style). I know my theory and got the T-shirt. I have historical data in my calender going back to 1998.
For all the software mentioned beneath I own the desktop and the Palm version.

My goal is simple, but it starts to look like utopia. I want to be able to see in my calendar a list of stuff that I have been doing throughout the day. Should be simple given the fact that all the information is electronically available. But so far.....

Meetings are of course listed.
Call log to meeting. I am currently working on a script to achieve this. Because I have not found any software capable of doing this.
SMS log to meeting. Not found yet. I have sms2csv but have to find a way to transpose that into vcf style.
For completed To-do's I use convert to meeting within Agendus. Then I set the date and time and (if necessary the contact person/project etc) That has proven to work really well if I look up contacts to find what we have done in the past.


I use Agendus for my calender scheduling purposes. That works great. But the To do lists just @#$%@!$. The palm version deviates from the desktop version in functionality and you have to set preferences in both versions to align the look and feel. The biggest issue is that outlining is just not really possible. They call it hierarchy, but its a drag. And upon synchronisation you loose your effort unless you do loads of tricks.

I own Lifebalance. It's a good program with a quick outline that is easily adaptable. But it lacks calender purposes. So I use it for to do outlining. But that leaves me with four places to change to-do's. Agendus desktop for collection of to-do's, agendus palm version for to-do's, lifebalance desktop version and lifebalance palm version. Offcourse I restrict myself to only work in one place at the time and synchronize xx amount of times during the day. But it just doesn't work. Replication errors, double entry's, lost to-do's. It's all there.

So I thought to give Bonsai a change. Thumbs up for this forum because it happens to be the only forum where the staff reacts within days! and often quicker.

If you have read this post up to here, then you can understand that I am a bit reluctant to try Bonsai. I am using the trial version now and am in the fortunate position to buy a license if I want to. But what will it bring? What extra or better will Bonsai bring considering all of the above?

And can I tick off to-do's in Bonsai and have them completed as well in the 'normal' task dbase of Palm?

Reading back I see that I do not have that much of a clear question... but please do comment you thoughts.

Thanks in advance, Manfred.

[Richard Murphy]

Manfred,
Thanks for installing the Bonsai trial.

Quote

...can I tick off to-do's in Bonsai and have them completed as well in the 'normal' task dbase of Palm?

Yes, any changes to either the To-Do or the linked item in the Bonsai outline will propagate to the other side of the link. If changes are made on the desktop side, you will need to sync twice to fully propagate the change.

Quote

What extra or better will Bonsai bring considering all of the above?

That's not an easy question to answer. Given customer feedback over the years, I suggest looking at configuring views and filters to help Bonsai display just the data you need given your current context. Our advanced users tend to build a dozen or more filters to help them view their tasks based on location or other criteria.

[kunkel321]

I usually don't discuss other shareware in a shareware forum, but...

I'm a school psych so I keep track of lots of appointments, phone logs, etc.
Bonsai is my main "note-keeping" tool. I use another tool in conjunction with it. MacroExpress is a Windows tool that lets you automate a lot of things. for example, I can type in "##ph" and it will pop up a form that lets me tick off the type of comunication, then it enters it all into Bonsai for me (not behind the scenes though, Bonsai has to be open). A similar tool for the PalmOS is pToolSet.

PS: I empathize with you... Have been a Palm user for 8 or 9 years. I have dozens of reg codes, but only use a small number of the apps :)