Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!uunet!microsoft!garye
From: garye@microsoft.UUCP (Gary ERICSON)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: Re: Portfolio, HP-95, M-100 &
Message-ID: <72993@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 18 Jun 91 21:05:31 GMT
References: <1991Jun9.152710.20556@lsuc.on.ca> <1752@crl.LABS.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: garye@microsoft.UUCP (Gary ERICSON)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 62

In article <1752@crl.LABS.TEK.COM> Cynthia Ellis writes:
>
>I disagree with Jim's conclusion here. I get "real work" done with
>my Pofo.
>
>I used to carry a Geodex everywhere with me; that's what you're
>supposed to do to make it useful. It was a lot bigger than my
>Pofo. My Pofo fits in my purse, which my Geodex never did. I
>find the Pofo much more useful because of this. 
>
>And the Pofo does almost as much. I don't have storage for hand-written
>notes, that's the only thing I miss about my Geodex, ...
>... the Geodex didn't have an alarm to remind me 
>that it was time to get to a meeting, ...
>
>In summary, I am very pleased with my Pofo, and I feel I do a lot
>more than just "play" with it (although I do have a RAM card with
>some games that I downloaded from Compu$erve :-).
>
>Cindy

You are one of the few people I've found who uses a Geodex rather than
a Day Timer or other more well-known notebook.  I've thought about
replacing my Geodex with one of these organizers, and maybe you (as an
[ex-]Geodex user) can answer a couple of questions I've had:

  1. Geodex gives you year, month, week, day -at-a-glance views of your
     time, displaying more information than an 8 or 16 line display
     could.  Do you miss being able to see as much as you can on a
     5"x8" page?  Or does the advantage of not having to manually copy
     the data from one view to another make up for that deficit?

  2. The Geodex system is supposed to be more than an appointment and
     address book - it's big thing is the Key Result Area concept and all
     the forms you can use (project planning, meeting planning, decision
     making, etc.) to organize yourself.  Did you use those features of
     the Geodex?  Do you transfer those ideas over to the Pofo in some 
     way?

  3. You say you miss being able to keep handwritten notes - do you keep
     notes in your Pofo?  Can you organize them in a way similar to the way
     you can organize notes and information in the Geodex with KRA dividers
     and such?  I organize my non-calendar section of my Geodex using
     3-position dividers I made myself - keeps it organized like a filing
     cabinet.  Can you organize information in your Pofo in a similar way?

  4. [this may depend on the answer to #3] With a Geodex (or other paper
     notebook system), you can find information quickly by finding and
     opening the page you want, using tab indexes or section dividers or
     whatever.  You grab the page, open it, and you're there.  Do you find
     that you can find information as quickly and easily (or quickly and
     easily enough) in your Pofo?  If it's not as fast/easy, does the
     ability to search for text in notes (I assume the Pofo can do this)
     make up for it?

Thanks for any info you're willing to give.  I never see answers to
these kinds of questions because I rarely find someone who has left a
"system" like Geodex (as opposed to just a pocket calendar) and gone to
an electronic organizer, making some of these trade-offs in the
process.

Gary Ericson - Microsoft - Work Group Apps