EfficientPIM - Organize Your Business And Private Life
Nowadays, in the time of speed, being organized may be one of the easy ways to get on top and stay there. Don’t do the mistake I did once and think you can remember everything. Trust me, you can’t keep track of everything, especially if you have a modern job, where every workday has a different schedule.
When things seemed to be closer than ever of getting out of control I decided it’s time to search for a program to help me organize my daily schedule, my work tasks, my whole life if possible. I knew it won’t solve absolutely everything, but at least it would help me set my mind clear. And that should have make things easier.
So I started looking for a PIM (Personal Information Manager) software. I wasn’t convinced I’ll find one to be both feature-rich and easy-to-use, the way I wanted it to be. Happily, I found one. After checking a few, the one that impressed me the most and had what I was looking for was EfficientPIM. This one is able to keep track of contacts, appointments, tasks, to-do lists, birthdays, and so on, while having a really friendly and intuitive interface.
The 30-day free trial version with no other limitations got me convinced that EfficientPIM was what I needed.
This great piece of software lets you easily and effectively manage your contacts, appointments, tasks, diaries, notes, passwords, or any other information you need access to. It also comes with 8 interface styles and provides powerful search capabilities. Truly easy-to-use and highly-customizable, this PIM software also comes with a handy document editor quite similar to MS-Word, making it very easy for you to write your diary, memos, notes, and a variety of other documents in any way you like.
Contacts management, password management with encryption support, desktop notes, internal Recycle Bin, backup and restore, are just a few of the others features available within this software.
The first time you run it you may already see that its interface is made to be easy-to-use. There’s a left-sided panel with shortcuts that will let you easily create a new event, a new all-day event, a new recurring event, a new task or a new diary entry.
A lower panel lets you change the interface style – you may choose between 8 interface styles (XP Blue, XP Metallic, XP Olive, 2000 Classic, Vista Blue, Vista Metallic, Vista Olive and Vista Obsidian). When you first run this software you may also choose the predefined holidays (international holidays or the major holidays of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and USA). The holidays may also be imported from a specific file (.eph file), and you may enable EfficientPIM to remind you of a holiday with 1 to 99 days ahead.
Helpful tips are also provided at the startup of this PIM (you may uncheck this option if you wish so).
The main menu is placed on the lower left side of the interface, allowing you to quickly access the main functions and tools of this software: the “Today” window which lets you view and edit the today’s events, as well as the events occurring or tasks due in the next several days, the “Calendar” module, where you may view and manage your appointments and events by day, work week, week, month, year and time grid, the “Contacts” window, the “Events” function module, the “Tasks” one, the “Diary” and the “Notes”. By clicking the “Show More Buttons” button you may extend this menu – additional shortcuts will be displayed for the following functions: Desktop Notes, Password Manager, Favorite URLs, Search and Recycle Bin.
All these main functions may also be easily accessed from the upper menu, the “Go” tab.
Creating a new event is the point where you may see the power of this software fully unleashed. Not only you may specify the title, the location, the start time and the end time, but you may also set an importance level, a label, a reminder that may be set to alert you before the event, as well as attachments, file links, contacts, groups, etc. You can also specify the recurrence of the event, based on any pattern (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) and range. For each event you may insert various comments – to do that EfficientPIM provides you with a complete text editor - an impressive one too as it offers a large variety of features itself: font customization, picture inserting, hyperlinks, emoticons, table support, and much more.
Also, when adding a new contact you may fill in a truly wide variety of details. You may specify only a name and a phone number if you want so, but you may as well specify a lot more, even hobbies, strengths, comments… anything you might think of.
Furthermore, EfficientPIM can be password-protected and comes with backup and restore functions to ensure the highest level of security for your information. Various sorting and viewing options are also available. You may import the information (contacts, events, diary entries, notes, passwords, e-mail and FTP accounts, even the favorite URLs and software registration codes) from .csv and .txt files and export to .csv and .html files.
A simple yet helpful password generating tool is also included.
EfficientPIM can reside unobtrusively in the system tray until needed and I’ve also noticed its memory usage was nothing to be concerned about.
Considering that, besides all these, EfficientPIM also includes a handy password manager, a “desktop notes” tool, a diary, a feature-rich bookmarks manager, the price of $29.95 can be anything else but not a high one. Only a simple password manager or an average desktop notes software costs that much. And there’s no way you could compare the things EfficientPIM has to offer with this kind of programs.
So… why EfficientPIM? The features, the interface, the price, everything.
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