I am interested in the thread on the State of the PIM market, because it makes me realise that my idea of a PIM seems to be different from everyone elses.

The core tools of a PIM for me are the diary, address book, to do list and some way of tracking activities/documents associated with particular tasks or/and people.

Ecco fully qualifies as a PIM, with the added bonus of a decent freeform database capability. Time Matters, Goldmine etc also qualify

Outlook fails because it has no easy method of associating letters with a contact.

Zoot, Asksam, Ultra Recall etc all fall into a Freeform database category, I don't see any of them as being PIMS, because they have no native diary/contact tools.

It seems that PIM is being used to describe any tool that can be used to manage "personal" information. But then Access and Alpha 5 etc can also do that, if in a mor formal manner.

I am sure this wasn't always the case and I find it confusing when people discuss PIMs without comparing core PIM features.

Mind you I also find it confusing when people talk bout Ecco as an Outliner, when really what it does is give a tree view of a folder hierarchy, It is not what I think of as being an Outliner, ie something for "outlining" a document structure, as in NoteMap.

So what are PIMs, and what makes some programs PIMs and other programs not PIMs?

Graham

Good point. I would say that most of these free form dBs can be adapted to handling "diary, address book, to do list and some way of tracking activities/documents". Those of us that really like a free form approach still may be using our free form db to handle these types of items although admittedly probably not as cleanly. If I lived in my calendar I probably would not like a free form pim approach.

I am interested in the thread on the State of the PIM market, because it makes me realise that my idea of a PIM seems to be different from everyone elses.

Graham,

I agree with you that most of the applications listed by Daly are not technically PIMs. However, even in the computer industry itself, the definition of PIM has become very broad-based and now includes almost any kind of information management software. Go to any of the shareware download sites (www.download.com for instance) and click on the Personal Information Management section and you'll find most of these applications. PIMs seem to include a spectrum of applications from strict contact management software to to-do list managers to free-form databases and everything in between.

Like you, I consider an outliner an application dedicated to creating outlines, such as NoteMap or Inspiration to mention the only two that seem viable in the Windows world at the moment. But this list regularly discusses any application that includes hierarchical organization of data. We've expanded the category to make our discussions more interesting (I mean, how long can you discuss NoteMap and lament the passing of GrandView?).

So, I guess where I'm going with this is that for the sake of discussion, I think a PIM is any application that allows you to manage your personal information. How that might exclude sophisticated relational database programs like Access is this: those applications are generally used to manage corporate data not the information you acquire for your personal productivity (sometimes these overlap, as in customer management).

It is good that you raised this question, because I think it is important for us to remain aware of these distinctions, even if we choose to ignore them for the sake of lively debate.

Steve Z.