THE ORGANISERS ORGANISER - KEMPSTON DAATAfax HOW WELL ORGANISED ARE YOU? Do you make do with bits of paper and notes pinned to the door to remind yourself of those important events? I once did, and quite often came unstuck, missing that important meeting or, horror of horrors, my wife's birthday or our wedding anniversary. People like me really will benefit from Kempston Data's DAATAfax. It takes a bit of getting used to and some would say that diary keeping is too regimental for them, but if you want to be Professional at what you are doing then chances are there will be information, times, places and events that must be remembered. Not to mention the need to remember when to buy that bouquet of flowers. DAATAfax provides, from within CP/M, a Diary, Phone book, Notepad and Calendar all linked with a handy clipboard feature for transferring data between the four modules. Being Icon driven, the program is ideal for use with Kempston's Mouse to quickly click your choice directly from the display. And when all is done print it out on continuous paper (50 sheets are provided, additional packs of 250 sheets are available, ready punched and perforated at #8.95 for white and #9.95 for coloured pastel stationery) ready for inserting into your Filofax or compatible Personal Organiser. But why use DAATAfax? There are plenty of programs around that printout calendars etc. Quite simply DAATAfax does the lot, quickly, efficiently and neatly: No Fuss, No Bother. All your data is stored on disk as a backup, ready for updating or just in case its lost. DAATAfax is copy protected, so you would be wise to follow Kempston's advice and register your purchase, each disk comes with its own serial number for quick identification. Even if you don't have a Filofax personal diary you may consider going the whole hog and starting off with a complete package to include the DAATAfax software and vinyl binder for an additional #9.95. GETTING STARTED From CP/M's A> prompt, with the master disk in A: drive type 'DAATAFAX' which quickly loads the program and asks for the date. You are now presented with a display of a closed Filofax Personal Organiser and a set of ICONS which can be selected with a mouse or via the function keys from the keyboard. All the modules (except the calendar) require a datafile to work on, and will ask for its name before continuing with the selected module. DIARY The diary module offers a method of formalising your business (or personal) activities ready for insertion in your own Filofax binder. The potential for professionals to have their monthly schedules typed up and printed out by their Secretary in a Filofax compatible format must now be a very real advantage. The DIARY has six lines per day, with four days fitting onto a page. The screen editor is fairly basic but offers CUT and PASTE facilities as well as the ability to move blocks of text to another part of the DIARY, via a clipboard facility. PHONEBOOK The PHONEBOOK module provides a useful, integral program to gather together in the Filofax framework all your personal and business names, addresses and telephone numbers. Although entering the data can be very time consuming - this could have been made less tiresome by reducing the number of keystrokes involved when entering large amounts of data initially - I liked the format and visual screen display which made this module very lifelike. The search facility provides what would be expected but more selective, conditional searches associated with database software is not supported. You can find any record by entering a string or sequence of numbers which will find all occurrences. Handy if you want to match a phone number with the rest of its data. NOTEPAD This module has a more powerful text editing ability than the DIARY module and is ideal for entering tabulated data such as timetables or sales targets etc. GRAPHICS A GRAPHICS conversion program - compatible with Database Software's Desktop Publisher - is provided for importing graphics images into the NOTEPAD module. Likewise, a LocoScript conversion program is provided for importing ASCII files created with LocoScript. CALENDAR The mainstay of any diary is the calendar. This module allows you to print three months per page for any year you choose to have displayed. PRINTING This can be in NLQ or draft and one or double sided printing is provided for. Having never used the tractor feed attachment with continuous paper I approached the printing out of my data with some apprehension. By following the instructions in the manual I got it right first time round without wasting any paper. CONCLUSION Although many would consider this package a luxury, when the benefits are weighed against the price - not to mention the potential increase in productivity of the organised Professional - you could quickly recoup the initial outlay in more than financial terms. For those who like everything to be neat and tidy DAATAfax will go a very long way in satisfying their needs too. An ideal gift for the person that has everything!