It seems that---with William LaMartin asking for articles on a regular basis---we might want to consider sharing "a few of our favorite things"…namely favorite software programs. You know, the one that you use for just about everything, and you can’t imagine switching to another program because this one just does perfectly for you what it’s supposed to…so well? (For instance, I think we can all agree that WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS was the premier word processor in all of history, and it’s been downhill ever since then…but that’s another story.)

Well, let me be the first to lead off. I’ve been using computers in my law practice since about 1985, when I finally figured out how to use DOS on the 40-pound Zenith Z-160 "luggable" that I’d bought with the two 360K floppy drives and the tiny orange CRT. Sigh. Those were the days, weren’t they? But I digress. Back in the mid-1980’s there was a little pop-up TSR ("terminate and stay resident," lest we forget) program that was advertised in all the computer magazines called "Tornado." It wasn’t quite totally clear what the program could or would or should be used for, but the marketing campaign said it would be mightily useful…if you could figure out what you were gonna do with it.

At that time Tornado was one of a nascent class of programs that years later would come to be called "PIMs" (personal information managers). Of course, no one called it that then, because no one had ever seen anything quite like it. It was originally trumpeted as a terrific way to keep names, addresses and telephone numbers, as well as "random information" (whatever that meant). Well, as a shiny young lawyer I figured I had more than enough random information to keep track of…so I took a flyer on the program and bought it…I think it was $39.95 or something like that.

Now this brings me to another digression, but one that will lead us back to little Tornado’s latter-day incarnation in due time. Have you ever noticed that---in years past, at least---one of the hardest things to figure out about software was…how you were gonna use it? Like, how you were going to actually put it to work so that it fit your circumstances, your work structure, your…your…way-of-doing-things? Even today I find that’s still a Major Question. Well, in those nether days of yore, when we were all fiddling around with DOS and DOS programs and TSR’s and these newfangled things called "word processors" (remember what a sensation WordPerfect 4.2 caused?), I couldn’t exactly figure out how I was going to use Tornado…but I figured that I could at least start by using it for my address/contacts/telephone book. And it served that purpose well, as I remember.

Well that, as they say, was then. And this is now. My favorite program, the one that gets cranked up in Windows 95 at the very beginning of the day, and the one that is repeatedly used for all kinds of things, is Info Select 5.0, the latest end product of its distant ancestor, Tornado (when they made the jump from DOS to Windows, I heard, they got into some kind of copyright snafu with some other Tornado-name-user, so they switched the name of the little program to the inelegant but pretty descriptive "Info Select").

Now, before I tell you the myriad ways I use Info Select, I’ve got to say there’s a funny thing about it: Many of the computer world pundits and reviewers don’t seem to like it…or understand it. When you sniff out a "comparison" review of PIMs on the Internet, you’ll often find the writers scratching their heads over Info Select. The "standard" PIMs like EccoPro and Lotus Organizer and Act! and even Time and Chaos32 and Above & Beyond…well, those they can understand just fine, with all those clear little boxes and fields and fill-in-the-blank thingies. Problem is…Info Select doesn’t have just about any of that. It just lets you---no, no, it insists that you---figure it out yourself and then set it up and use it the way you want.

That seems to unnerve a lot of computer users, especially the pundits. I had a friend, Chad, who asked me what PIM I would recommend, back in the late ‘80’s. I was only too glad to tell him about Info Select. Well…he tried it, and he couldn’t stand it. Just couldn’t get comfortable with it. He…just…couldn’t "figure it out," that is. He couldn’t figure out how it was that he was going to use it. Strange, I thought. But then he got an early version of Lotus Organizer…and oh well, Chad was in hog-heaven with that little program. Thing was, I couldn’t see how Organizer had any versatility or usability at all compared to Info Select….

Well, again, "that was then, this is now." Since the 1980’s when a few of those little babies were popping up here and there, modeled for the most part on existing paper organizers…since then a whole galaxy of those little huggers has appeared. Oh, it’s just been grand. First of all, the suites all had ta have a PIM as a component, from Microsoft Office’s "Outlook," to Corel WordPerfect 8’s "CorelCentral," to the aforementioned Lotus "Organizer" (and Organizer 97, and Organizer 97 GS, and Organizer Premium Edition…sheesh), they’ve all become tails that sometimes wag the dog, an indispensible part of every suite.

And the rest? Oh yeah, "the rest": You get to choose. From EccoPro to Act!5.0 to Day-Timer Organizer Deluxe, to Franklin Quest Ascend, to Janna Contact 95, to Maximizer 97is, to PackRat, to InTouch, to Comm Assistant, to PhoneBook95 Professional Edition, to Virtual Secretary, to Above & Beyond, to Time and Chaos32, to Client Tracks, to Organizer 97, to Quick Organiser, to AMF Daily Planner and PIM, to…to…well shucks, we can go on like this all day, and then all next week naming these little boomers. It’s like there are more PIM’s out there than cockroaches, and they seem to be multiplying almost as fast! It’s like everyone with a keyboard has decided he’s gonna bat out the dee-finitive PIM and slap it on the Internet…and it seems they’re all just doing just that!

But I digress again. I was talking about my little gem, Info Select. Now, lemme tell ya this about that little enchilada! Oh. Oops…William says wait! William says I can’t do unlimited babbling in a single issue of the newsletter. So I’ll reluctantly shut up for the time being. Next newsletter, I’ll tell you all about my baby, Info Select, and the myriad ways I use it.