CNET Editors' review
Task Coach attempts to improve upon traditional calendar systems by adding a personal touch and focusing on more than merely tracking tasks or events. While this may sound like a knight in shining armor to many users, we found it wasn't quite the hero we'd hoped for.
This free program is a repository for your goals and tasks. Enter the day's events (like studying for French class or completing a report) into the new tasks section; you can include detailed descriptions for entries, and even input a URL that turns instantly to a link. Users also fill in the date and time for this task, and can create a reminder. Budgets, attachments, and more can be added to customize this job, including less tangible aspects like Behavior and Effort. For further organization, Task Coach also has the capability to assign each job a priority and a color.
While this may sound like just what you need to stay organized, the program's interface is cluttered and not intuitive. The options for Effort and Behavior, like many of the program's features, lack adequate user direction. In addition, users can create Categories, but their relationships to the tasks don't make themselves instantly noticeable.
Task Coach's complexity offsets its usefulness. It's trying to do too much without simplifying the processes enough for the user. While we applaud the idea, we weren't crazy about the execution, and suggest that busy users look for a more user-friendly way to stay on task.
Publisher's Description
From Frank Niessink:
Task Coach is a simple open source todo manager to manage personal tasks and todo lists. It grew out of a frustration that well-known task managers, such as those provided with Outlook or Lotus Notes, do not provide facilities for composite tasks. Often, tasks and other things todo consist of several activities. Task Coach is designed to deal with composite tasks.
What's new in this version: Version 1.3.7 fixed bugs where paste as subitem didn't work for efforts issue and hiding inactive tasks would also hide some active tasks.
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All versions:
2.3 starsout of 3 votes
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Current version:
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Results 1-3 of 3
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"Not useful"
Version: Task Coach 1.2.27
Pros
frequent updates
Cons
Little function; updates are trivial in nature.
Summary
I've tried Task Coach for several months on a few of my projects, but it has not been useful in any way. Uninstalling. :-(
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"I'll call it 3 stars for now. See 'Cons' below."
Version: Task Coach 1.2.5
Pros
Task Coach provides a complete list of current, past due and upcoming tasks with one click on the taskbar. Better is that notes can be added to tasks which can be seen with a mouseover. Plus, tasks can be placed & viewed in separate categories.
Cons
I can't install this update because the installer is unable to delete unnecessary files from my current version. After some research, I found that this is a common problem. I have not yet contacted the authors of Task Coach regarding this.
Summary
My older version of Task Coach is great. It puts my To-Do list on my desktop and, when closed, remains immediately available with a click on the task bar icon. Tasks can be color coded for easy sorting and can be placed in categories which can be viewed individually, all at once, or selectively.
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"wait for a few versions"
Version: Task Coach 0.63
Pros
Great ideas, better interface and presentation of to-do lists. This was just what I was looking for.
Cons
This alpha version 0.632 won't save my work. Can't get much past that.
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