Efficient Man's Organizer Free for Windows

Efficient Software's personal organizer comes in several versions, including freeware editions that offer most of the functionality but fewer features than the full versions. There are also versions optimized for men and women, Efficient Lady's Organizer Free and Efficient Man's Organizer Free. It's the same program, except that the ladies' version is decorated with pink hearts while the men's version is skinned in bolder, starker tones. Sure, it'd be easy to joke about gendered software, but at least there's a choice that doesn't involve a default theme that looks more like a bank statement than your life, organized.

Efficient Man's Organizer Free's Navigation Panel accesses a series of tabs labeled Today, Calendar, Contacts, Events, Tasks, Diary, and Notes. These need little explaining; for instance, the Diary, Calendar, Contacts, and Notes features are similar to those found in nearly every personal organizer, but it's worth noting the key concepts of Today, Events, and Tasks. Events and Tasks are similar entries that are largely distinguished by your needs. For example, the wizard for setting both Events and Tasks is practically identical, but what the user designates as an Event or Task determines how the program handles and presents it. An Event might be a holiday, while a Task might be a reminder to buy a gift (something the program's ability to import holidays and other scheduling data can help with). Events, Tasks, and other pertinent data are displayed in the Today tab, which we were able to customize with the help of yet another wizard. There's also a useful Tool Tip, which advised us that more program themes were available on the View menu. However, some of the themes we sampled (notably the seasonal themes) seemed to be a bit out of place in a "man's" program. We certainly can't fault the developer for including them as options.

As with other versions of this free program, Efficient Man's Organizer Free offers just about everything busy people need to organize their schedules. We recently tried the portable freeware version of this program, Efficient Man's Organizer Free Portable, and found it to be just as useful and competent as its freeware brothers and sisters, yet another useful alternative built around the same basic tool.