SSuite CleverNote PIM for Windows

CleverNote PIM from SSuite Office Software is a free personal information manager for recording and organizing notes, events, tasks, and even personal finances. It bridges the gap between ordinary note-keeping programs and major productivity suites, combining a calendar, diary, notebook, and contacts manager in one compact, easy-to-use interface.

CleverNote's colorful, rectangular interface has a series of large, clearly labeled tabs and buttons for accessing its features and their functions, and a linear date line along the bottom that shows at a glance which days have pending appointments and let us quickly access individual appointments and notes. The default tab view, Calendar Diary, has a central field for entering notes, a right-hand display featuring a scrolling calendar, and the current month's calendar. We clicked New and added some appointments via the program's wizard, which involves setting a time, priority, and description as well as adding any comments. Buttons labeled Edit, Delete, and Move let us change appointments, remove them, or move them to another date via a wizard with a calendar view. All we had to do was click the new date to reschedule the appointment. The other tabs give access to an Address Book, Note Book, To-Do List, My Money, Travel Expenses, and My Briefcase. My Money and Travel Expenses also use a wizardlike method to help you configure your financial account details or record expenses while you travel. On-the-go users will also appreciate the briefcase feature, which let us attach documents and files and includes an Import/Export feature. There's a short help tutorial and a Web link but no formal Help file; however, we had no trouble figuring things out.

To be useful, a PIM program needs to offer more features than the others and still be easier to use. CleverNote PIM's combination of features and functionality meets that standard, in our opinion.