One annoyance for Palm users who also use Outlook on their desktop is that the way the Palm displays and organizes contacts, mail, tasks, and calendar is subtly different from Outlook. In some cases it’s nothing more than some minor organizational differences, but in others cases the differences are significant enough to make using your Palm a completely different experience. It forces Palm users to wonder why there isn’t a way to manage the data on your Palm in a way that takes advantage of the effort you’ve already put into learning how to organize your information in Outlook. Well, apparently the folks at DataViz have asked themselves the same question and has done something about it.

DataViz also makes the excellent Documents to Go for Palm, which allows you to use Excel and Word documents on your Palm, so it’s not surprising that they had the interest and expertise to make a more Outlook-friendly set of applications for the Palm. After even a brief look at Beyond Contacts you can see their expertise at work.

When you install Beyond Contacts there’s no corresponding desktop application. This tool is meant for Outlook users, so there’s no need for additional desktop tools. It also asks if you want to install their Inbox to Go application, which is also included in Documents to Go. Inbox to Go is the easiest to set up and most convenient to use mail sync tool an Outlook user is likely to find and integrates into Beyond Contacts, so the choice to install it is an easy “yes.” The first time you open Beyond Contacts it allows you to customize the buttons on your Palm to launch the new applications instead of the default Palm ones.

The first thing you’ll notice when you start up Beyond Contacts is that it is very clean and attractive. It is less spartan-looking and more colorful than the default Palm applications and yet not at all cluttered or busy. Like Documents to Go, the main program is actually a launching pad for the various sub-applications. This launcher is functionally the same as the Today screen for Outlook, allowing you to see upcoming appointments, a list of active tasks, and a note of how many unread e-mail messages you’ve got, as well the current date and time. Like Outlook, there are navigation icons along the left side to take you to Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Notes, and Mail. This screen is easily one of the best things about Beyond Contacts, and it’s worth your time to make sure it’s mapped to one of the buttons on your Palm.

Each of the new applications shares the same cleanliness and attractiveness of the launcher and each one incorporates options that make it more functionally equivalent to the Outlook desktop version. For instance, the Contacts application features a button bar that lets you jump to an alphabetical section of the list of contacts, although for space reasons it is filtered by three letters (ABC, DEF, etc.) rather than individual letters like the desktop. The address “cards” themselves are each organized almost identically to their desktop counterparts, and allow you access to all of the fields you use in Outlook. There’s even a “New e-mail to contact” option, just like on the desktop.

Exactly how closely do all of the applications mirror the desktop? Obviously there are differences due to the size of the Palm display and the lack of standard Windows interfaces, but they have done an excellent job of replicating all of the core functionality. DataViz actually has a very nice section on their website that walks you through animated comparisons of the various applications which does a much better job than I can here. (http://www.dataviz.com/products/beyondcontacts/tutorial/bc_flash_intro.html)

I have a few minor niggles, like the inability to filter Tasks to show only uncompleted tasks in the Today screen without purging the completed tasks, but to be honest, that’s something Outlook doesn’t do very well, either. Taken as a whole, I wasn’t able to find anything about Beyond Contacts that prevents me from saying it is a solid improvement over the default software.

Beyond Contacts takes up a little over a megabyte of space on your device, which might seem like a lot to devote to applications that do functions that are already on your Palm, but the increased functionality is well worth the space and the $29.99 price tag.

DataViz offers a 30 day free trial so that you can put it through the paces on your own Palm prior to purchase. Someone should have done this ages ago, and now that it’s available, you should take the time to try it out.

--Tucker Hatfield
Technology Editor




DataViz Beyond Contacts
$29.99