Agenda Fusion vs. Pocket Informant Debate Solved

[Xianfox]

Well, at least for me. :wink:

I got tired of waiting for v5 of Agenda Fusion, so I bought Pocket Informant; which means Agenda Fusion 5 should be out any second now. :?

I've got one question though, is the 24 page manual all there is? I guess I was expecting something a little more substantial. After scouring the "manual" twice, I'm still not sure I'm getting the most out of PI.

[Sparkomatic]

If you check out PI's website, there is a great discussion board with user to user tips and tricks. I go there all the time to get updates on when the next version is coming out. Alex, the developer, visits the site from time to time as well.

[ikesler]

Yep the forums on the WEBIS site is the place to go...........
The manual is a tad sparce........ so the forums come in really useful......
Also I think the best way to go for PI is to just start using it......... I have been using it for 2 years now and still come up with new things....... the program really is deep in options, IF you want it to be......

[Xianfox]

... I have been using it for 2 years now and still come up with new things...

See, I guess that's what's bothering me. I've spent the last 24 years in the computer industry--Cobol, Fortran, Assembler, and various other languages (stopped writing code about 10 years ago)--and have dealt extensivly with publishing and documentation. If an advanced user of a program is still finding new features after 2 years of use, it's too poorly documented. And I don't relish trying to keep up with yet another forum.

To quote Dogbert, "Bah."

[Mark R Penn]

Duplicate post - my mistake :oops:

[Mark R Penn]

Alex has recognised that the documentation is weak, and I think it will be improved very soon. Also remember that the PI Ian (and I) were using two years ago, is not the same as the PI we are using today, so even if you learned all of it last year, you'd have more to learn today!

As with all PIM's, the key is to understand what you WANT to do, find out how to do that, and then not worry about all the bits your not using! The forum is fantastic for that - don't ask "how does xyz feature work" (well those questions are valid as well, but in this context.....), instead ask "in this scenario, what do you guys do?". It's the fact that PI is capable of adapting to so many sittuations that makes writing a comprehensive manual so difficult (but that's not to say Alex should not try!).

And if AF 5.0 does come out tomorrow, don't worry, because................. :wink: :wink:

[pcause]

Yes, you are 100% correct about the documentation. There is so much in PI and so little of it is in the docs. The forums help, but the docs should be better. One reason for this is that PI has so many options. A PIM is all about "personal" and users ave so many different preferences in how they want the program to behave. For example, look at the PI month view.

You can get inline day details or have a window at the bottom. You can also have the detail window be a popup instead of anchored to the bottom. You can select several days and get the time bars for just those days displayed. So, if you select Mon-Fri of this week, you get a week time usage overview. Tap a day in that view and you get the details at the bottom. And, there is MORE!

PI does need lots more and better docs. Alex will fix this, but people keep beating on him for more features and the competition for better screen shots drives a lot of the sales.