SmartList To Go

Rating:
Summary: Greatest thing since sliced bread.
Review: "Smartlist To Go" made by DataViz pays for itself right out of the box. As with any other unique data application, you can perform the same functions with a word processor or a spreadsheet. However they would be amateurish and you would paint yourself into a corner and it came to needing the functionality that "Smartlist To Go" can give you. This project displays many views of the same data geared towards the use of a handheld.

This program loaded with these and came with an instruction booklet explaining how to use the product on My Sony P. E. O. With a little bit of practice in the examples that I was able to download I was off and running within the hour.

My wife has usurped the Sony and is doing things with Smartlist that I never dreamed of. She already has a list of books, a list of yarn, and as you read this she's making more lists.

It says you receive free technical support from the friendly, knowledgeable technical support staff. It looks like I'll never find out as everything was straightforward and works out of the box.

Rating:
Summary: Greatest thing since sliced bread.
Review: "Smartlist To Go" made by DataViz pays for itself right out of the box. As with any other unique data application, you can perform the same functions with a word processor or a spreadsheet. However they would be amateurish and you would paint yourself into a corner and it came to needing the functionality that "Smartlist To Go" can give you. This project displays many views of the same data geared towards the use of a handheld.

This program loaded with these and came with an instruction booklet explaining how to use the product on My Sony P. E. O. With a little bit of practice in the examples that I was able to download I was off and running within the hour.

My wife has usurped the Sony and is doing things with Smartlist that I never dreamed of. She already has a list of books, a list of yarn, and as you read this she's making more lists.

It says you receive free technical support from the friendly, knowledgeable technical support staff. It looks like I'll never find out as everything was straightforward and works out of the box.

Rating:
Summary: What you probably bought your PDA for...
Review: Smartlist to Go is (if you're anything like me) probably what you bought a PDA for in the first place, only to be disappointed by the rudimentary applications that come with most. I'm using a Handspring Visor Delux (cause it was cheap) - having resisted buying a PDA for years - running the Palm OS. Mainly I wanted a small device for portability beyond that of my laptop PC. I don't want to edit Word or Excel docs on it, or do my email. I wanted to do lists.

SmartList to Go gives you pretty much everything you need in a listing application (really a database)and it does it all in a straightforward and usable manner. Additionally, it provides a design interface (on the PC side) and a synch capability with Microsoft Access. All of this works well right out of the box and comes with some basic lists you might find useful (or at least will give you some ideas to create your own). With one minor glitch in the Access synch capability (described below) it installs easily, synchs up cleanly, and has a nice feature set. Additionally it creates an Excel add-in (nice if you don't have Access or have fewer database requirements) - though you won't see this occur and must open Excel (or the Getting Started guide) to realize it. It also supports synch with Filemaker Pro though I don't use that and didn't test it.

While I have some 'development' software for Palm OS, this product is much simpler to use and generally satisfies 90% of my needs relative to lists and my PDA. At the price (particularly with the rebate) it just can't be beat. In fact, I like it so much I'm even going to test drive the 'companion' product Docs to Go.

The Access issue: The manual sort of indicates that when you use the Synch manager to set up an existing list for synch, the Manager will create the Access database and tables. I couldn't make this happen and instead created a new database then pointed the Manager at that - the tables where created just fine then. Having done this I didn't see any point in resolving the issue with Dataviz support. EDIT: I have since discovered that this issue IS covered by the manual - the solution is as I've stated, you must create the Access database yourself.

One more thing: I also ran into a problem with a couple of the sample lists - they wouldn't load from the distribution CD and an error was generated in the synch log. I downloaded these lists from Dataviz's site and the download versions worked fine. I didn't find any entries in the FAQ (at Dataviz) that dealt with this issue, but once again didn't see much point in pursuing it further.

All in all - if you have a Palm OS PDA and haven't acquired similar software you owe it to yourself to get this.

BTW, I'm a recently retired software/database developer with university training in Accounting and Information Systems and 30+ years of work experience in those fields. Just in case that matters... :)