Best free PIM
Best alternatives to Microsoft Outlook, part II
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By
Scott Spanbauer
A free, open-source app and a low-cost commercial program give Outlook, Microsoft's personal information manager (PIM), a run for its money. They may not be practical for organizations that rely on Microsoft Exchange Server, Outlook's back end, but these two programs have much to offer typical PC users. |
Can these apps out-Outlook Outlook?
In my July 31 column, I admitted my long-term addiction to Microsoft Outlook and described two alternative PIMs that come close to replicating Outlook's killer features, without the program's proprietary formats and hunger for memory.
Mozilla Thunderbird 2, with a score of 92, is free, full of features, and highly extensible thanks to a community of add-on developers. i.Scribe — and its more powerful commercial sibling InScribe — is a better fit for older systems where memory is tight. The free version of i.Scribe scored 88, while the $20 version scored 90.
To sum up Part I of this review, the applications rated #1 and #2 are as follows:
#1: MOZILLA THUNDERBIRD 2
#2: MEMECODE I.SCRIBE/INSCRIBE
This week, I look at two other worthy replacements for Outlook: Poco Systems' Barca 2.5 and the Open Source Applications Foundation's just-debuted Chandler. Barca is a commercial application that in many ways mimics Outlook but costs less and requires less system memory. Chandler is a free, open-source organizer that may not be the best e-mail program but shows promise as an innovative group-communication tool.
As I mentioned in the last column, if your company uses Microsoft's Exchange e-mail server, it makes little sense to dump Outlook in favor of another e-mail client. Every user covered by your Exchange Server license also receives a license to use Outlook.
Nevertheless, just as Outlook alternatives are available for those looking for a less-expensive and less-proprietary e-mail experience, replacements for Exchange itself are also starting to crop up. One of the most notable is the open-source Zimbra Collaboration Suite.
#3: POCO SYSTEMS BARCA 2.5
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$60 version
90 More info |
If you're looking to escape Outlook, Poco Systems' Barca is a solid, small-footprint, feature-rich PIM that should satisfy both casual and power e-mail users. Barca grabs your mail from mulitple POP and IMAP accounts, and like Thunderbird, it incorporates newsgroup and RSS readers.
Barca imports contacts, messages, and account settings from the leading mail programs and PIMs, as well as calendar data stored in the iCalendar (.ics) and vCalendar (.vcs) formats.
Don't look for workflow innovations like those in Chandler, however (see below). In Barca, a message is a message and appointment is an appointment, though you can right-click a message and create a new task or appointment from it. Barca doesn't offer the equivalent of Chandler Hub or Server, so to share calendars, you'll need to buy the $80 Barca Pro version.
Barca's interface, though visually brighter and more modern than Outlook's, functions much like the Microsoft program circa Office 2000: rather than stars or labels, the program uses folders and multi-colored flags to note the urgency of a message (see Figure 1). The sticky notes you add are yellow by default, and you can create and save outgoing-message templates.
Figure 1. Barca's user interface is brighter than Microsoft Outlook's.
Other features let you organize contacts into mailing lists and filter incoming messages using complex rules. You can use the program's scripting language to automate routine e-mail tasks.
Barca offers the best of both junk-mail filtering technologies: Bayesian statistical analysis, and white/black lists for senders, receivers, and subjects.
So why buy a product that's so much like Outlook when you could just use the original? One reason is that at $60, Barca is much cheaper than Outlook's list price of $110. Also, Barca includes support via e-mail.
Another reason is that Barca consumes far less memory than Outlook — only about 8MB on my Vista system. Users of online calendars such as Google Calendar will probably want to stick with Thunderbird as an e-mail and calendaring client because Barca can't connect to your online appointments. However, if you're content in your own private Idaho, Barca is an excellent Outlook replacement.
#4: OPEN SOURCE APPLICATIONS FOUNDATION CHANDLER
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Free version
77 More info |
Years in the making, Chandler is a free, open-source PIM designed to be the central repository for all of the e-stuff you need, whether it lives in your inbox, on your calendar, in an address book, or in a task. This first version of the program makes a valiant attempt to unify e-mail, appointments, and tasks within a single dashboard view, and it comes close to pulling it off.
In Chandler, everything starts as a note, whether it ends up in your outbox, your calendar, or your to-do list. Incoming messages arrive in your inbox, but you can drag them to your calendar, where they transform into appointments. However, unlike Gmail's handy Create Event command, Chandler doesn't automatically grab the appointment date and time information from the message contents. OSAF needs to add this feature to Chandler 1.1.
Like leading e-mail clients, Chandler lets you organize your mail using stars and "collections," which function much like folders or Gmail's labels. By OSAF's own admission, however, Chandler is not yet a full-fledged e-mail client. For one thing, the program lacks a contact list. For another, although it allows you to send and receive mail using POP3 and IMAP servers, the only messages you will see in your Chandler inbox by default are those sent by other Chandler desktop clients.
Nevertheless, I found an easy way to see all of my Gmail messages in Chandler. The program places three folders on your IMAP server corresponding to Events, Mail, and Starred Items. By labeling all of my incoming mail with the Chandler mail folder/label (something you can configure Gmail to do automatically), I was able to see all of my Gmail messages.
If your mail server supports IMAP and can filter incoming messages, you'll have no problem using Chandler as your e-mail client. If it doesn't support these features, Chandler won't do. (Note that although Chandler's readme file states that the program has been tested only on Windows XP, I ran it under Windows Vista without trouble.)
Chandler's calendaring features, like those for e-mail, are not yet fully formed. The program lets you import your existing calendars from other apps that support the iCalendar (.ics) calendar-exchange format, including Outlook and Lightning (the Thunderbird calendar add-on). You can also import Web-based calendar data from Google and .Mac using the iCal protocol.
Unfortunately, Chandler doesn't yet support two-way synching with third-party, Web-hosted calendars. To its great credit, however, OSAF does provide a free Web-based calendar host of its own, called Chandler Hub, which mirrors your local calendar. This allows you to sync your home and office PCs, for example, and share your calendar with coworkers who are also running Chandler.
If you don't trust OSAF with your data, you can download the Chandler Server software for the Chandler Hub and run your own private hub. This is probably the best use for Chandler right now — as a dedicated communications tool for groups of collaborators working remotely via the Web or on a local area network. Despite its missing features, Chandler is a rock-solid group-organization tool you can start using — for free — today.
Scott Spanbauer writes frequently for PC World, Business 2.0, CIO, Forbes ASAP, and Fortune Small Business. He has contributed to several books and was technical reviewer of Jim Aspinwall's PC Hacks. He alternates writing the Best Software column each week with senior editor Ian "Gizmo" Richards.
Free service lets know how you are using your time
RescueTime is an online application which gives you a breakdown of how you spend time on your computer. The broad stats for me were email: 51%; surfing: 23%; reviewing: 11%; writing: 9%. However, much finer breakdowns are possible by tagging your activities, and this could prove useful to those who bill out their time to clients. To use RescueTime you need to install a small utility on your PC that collects the usage stats for the RescueTime server.
http://www.rescuetime.com/