RedBox Organizer 5.0 Review Spelling Counts Eric Grevstad
RedBox Organizer does many of the PIM basics adequately, though you'll need to overlook a somewhat skimpy help file and a handful of embarrassing typos in dialog boxes -- they prompt you to enter "Cetegories" or a "Desription," or "Set reccuring" appointments.
The To Do module lets you itemize tasks with not only start and due dates (and, Planner-wise, percentage finished) but sort them by status, priority (1 through 9), date, or category. A pop-up mini calendar helps you triumphantly add a "Completed on" date and cross off the task on your list.
The Calendar offers daily, weekly, and monthly views of your schedule, with the daily view available in both capsule-summary and scrollable time-slot form; if you like, a mini-list of To Do, Planner, Anniversaries, and Expenses items can share the display so you needn't flip back to the home screen.
You can specify your default business hours and appointment lengths, and enjoy several ways to add engagements -- double-clicking an empty area, dragging to highlight a time slot, or just pressing the Insert key. Adding alarms and specifying recurring appointments is straightforward, but RedBox will let you set up overlapping or conflicting appointments without a peep of warning. Also, when we dragged one instance of a weekly lunch meeting to a new time, we were briefly impressed that a helpful "Change just this one / All occurrences / Future occurrences / Past occurrences" dialog box popped up, but then dismayed that we literally couldn't cancel, press the Esc key, or otherwise undo the move.
The Address module is quite strong, letting you list not only home and business but a third, user-defined set of contact info for each person on file as well as attaching a digital photo or other image (.BMP format only, though .JPG files would save disk space). RedBox can open a new message in your e-mail client to send a message to a contact, and maintain a history of messages, calls, or meetings with him or her.
Finally, as mentioned, RedBox shines at constructing links -- indicated by paper-clip icons and quick-jump screen transitions -- between people and projects, between appointments and to-do items, or whatever. You can click a Link icon that walks you through the process of selecting the first, then the second half of a chain (via a dialog box that stays in the foreground as you switch between modules), or use a combined link and search dialog that lets you search for items in each of two modules and then pick from the search results to add a link.
PIMs are, as the name implies, personal or even idiosyncratic choices (that's why there are still a number of diehards using discontinued programs). If you're willing to look beyond Outlook, RedBox Organizer is an attractive program with some clever ideas and capabilities, but an equal number of rough edges.
