Other Contact Managers

Pocket Sales Force

Pocket Sales Force, known also as PSF, is the only Contact Manager that is System-Manager compliant. The ability to access PSF from within any built-in application is a key advantage over the other contact managers.

Pocket Sales Force works very much like a standard database. (Sparcom, PSF's U.S. distributor, plans to refine and market the product as a System-Manager compliant database program for the 95LX.) As a contact manager, PSF offers several advantages over the 95LX's built-in phone book.

First, the opening screen for PSF contains a menu with six command options:

Action Today! -- instructs PSF to search through the database for any companies which are due for action today.

Find company records -- allows you to search by any field to find the appropriate contact.

Input new sales leads -- allows you to add customer records. A unique feature of PSF is the capitalization of all applicable names. For example, if you type in a name like david it will format it automatically as David.

Process new sales leads -- is a unique feature that finds and displays each company that has not yet been assigned a "Next Action Date."

Setup -- allows you to configure the program with such information as changing the names of the 20 user-defined fields and setting a security password.

Export to 1-2-3 -- puts the format into a text file that can be read by Lotus. The 1-2-3 Data Parse command can then use this information.

Similar to ACT!'s pop-up choices, PSF offers a multiple choice list of predefined choices. Up to 80 items can be listed in a single multiple choice box.

Because of its database foundation, PSF offers such features as logical yes/no fields which make data entry a snap. This feature could be used to create a user defined field that asks whether or not a client is active. Another nice touch is the ability to put a salutation on the same line as the contact name. The search capability allows selecting records several ways including a range of values.

Pocket Sales Force allows you to easily assign an action such as a callback to a contact. When you select Action Today!, you are presented with a list of contacts with next action date set for today or previous. A useful merge/printing feature allows you to merge contact information to the letter of your choice created by HP's built-in memo editor.

Pocket Sales Force's installation, similar to ACT!, is quick and easy. Simply connect the cable between the PC and HP and follow the on-screen instructions. The software will be installed on the HP in a matter of minutes. Pocket Sales Force is only 60K in size and can run in as little as 200K. PSF is available in English, French and German, and offers several useful features over the built-in address book. However, it falls short of ACT!'s impressive feature set.

Contact 95

If a multilingual contact manager is a requirement, Contact 95 might be considered. Unfortunately, it offers little else over the competition and requires an incredible amount of system resources. It requires a minimum of 482K system RAM and about 300K for program files. On the standard 512K HP, you will have to take everything off of your internal RAM disk and purchase at least a 512K memory card. On a 1MB HP 95LX you will have to devote virtually all available resources to Contact 95. This is a bit much compared to the 65K average program size for the other two programs.