These 2 Programs Manhandle the Mundane
Some software is so good at mundane but necessary tasks that you hardly know it’s there. It just becomes a routine part of running your computer.
I use a couple of programs in that category: Reminders! from POP Computer Products, and XTreePro Gold from XTree Co.
Each morning when I turn on my machine, Reminders! fills my screen with a list of the day’s appointments. As the day progresses, I bring it back to the screen from time to time and add new commitments.
Priced at $40, Reminders! is a more comprehensive version of PopBasics Recall!, which goes for $15. The newer version adds memos and alarms to the basic scheduler.
The simplicity of Reminders! is its attraction. You provide only three items of information to define an entry. First is a line describing the appointment, event or task you want to remember. There is room for 50 characters on the line.
Next, the date. If you don’t remember the date, press the F2 key and up pops a calendar from which you can select it. If the reminder marks a recurring activity, you can easily assign it to all the relevant dates simply by picking them from the calendar.
Last comes the time, which is optional. If you don’t enter a time, the event appears at the top of the list. If you want to enter a time, typing it in shorthand form usually is enough, such as “10a,” which the program translates to “10:00A.” The only bug I found was noon. If you type “12n” it isn’t recognized. If “12p” is entered, it becomes “0:00A” and if you type “12a,” the program makes it “12:00P,” which the opposite of how it should work. You can avoid the problem by using 24-hour military time, which the program converts properly to a.m. and p.m.
A reminder remains on the list until deleted, so a task you don’t get to on one day will be there the next. Items also can be categorized with a word of up to eight characters. Then you can see only those items within the category.
The memo feature lets you add a simple note to any item on the list, while the alarm function makes your computer beep, if you wish, when a task is due.
The description you entered appears in a corner of your screen, superimposed over other software you are running at the time as long as it is not graphics, in which case only the beep occurs.
XTreePro Gold is the latest version of the popular XTree disk directory program that its makers have been enhancing for years.
Priced at $129, it has become a powerful computer manager. Its strength has always been an easily understood depiction of the files stored on your disks, showing clearly where and what the files are. Now, XTreePro Gold allows you to run any of your programs from a menu of choices that you create.
XTree always let you view the contents of simple text files, but now you can see files created by Display Write, Lotus Manuscript, Microsoft Word, Multimate, WordPerfect and WordStar. In addition, you can look at the contents of Lotus spreadsheet and Ashton-Tate dBase files (or compatible .WKS, .WK1 and .DBF files). To find a particular section of any of those files, use the search command. Once you’ve found it, you can copy sections and store them in a new or existing text file with an operation called “gather.”
There also is an “autoview” mode that displays a list of file names down the left side of the screen and the contents of any file highlighted on the list. It is a very fast way to see what you’ve got.
A split-screen function lets you display the contents of two disks simultaneously, comparing one against the other.
You have better control over the files than in previous versions. If you want to move all of the files in a particular directory to another location on your disk, use the new “graft” command and simply move the cursor to the new location on the graphic depiction of the directory “tree” on your disk. The tree shows how all the directories are related to each other logically, a concept that is simple to understand when visible, but difficult to grasp in the abstract. Similarly, an entire directory and its files can be deleted with a single “prune” command.
With the 40-, 60- and 80-megabyte hard disks common in today’s high-powered PCs, it is very easy to lose track of where a file is. With XTreePro Gold, you can display all of your files on all of your disk drives in a single list, sorted alphabetically or by size or date or time of last revision.
The XTree programs have always made it simple to back up your files on to floppies. You “tag” the files you want to copy, and tell the program to duplicate them onto a floppy. When one floppy fills, insert another and keep going. You can even format the new diskette if necessary.
Now, though, you can “archive” your seldom-used files in a process that condenses a group of related files, even an entire directory of them, and compresses their contents to store in a fraction of the space normally required. You have to “unarchive” before using the files again.
XTreePro Gold has two archiving methods, the ubiquitous “PKARC” method that is widely used for software distribution and archiving, and its own proprietary system. The difference is the proprietary mode can re-create the directory structure accompanying the files, while PKARC only stores the files, not the directory information.
Once you have an archive, you can “update” it with new files or new versions of files already in it, or “freshen” it with only new files, while leaving old versions of duplicate files undisturbed.
There are a couple of ways to run programs from within XTreePro Gold. One is to create an applications menu, which, incidentally, can be locked so that other users of the same machine can’t change it. Or you can simply point at the name of a file and run the program that created it. But to do the latter you do have to supply information to XTreePro Gold the first time about that program’s name and location.
Of course, all of the familiar XTree functions for deleting, copying, moving and renaming files and directories are still there.
THE SPECS
Reminders!
A $40 program that keeps track of commitments.
Features: Provides a description line, the date (which can be selected from a pop-up calendar) and optional time of event. Other options are a short attached memo, categorization and an alarm beep to notify you. Past events can be logged and saved.
Requirements: IBM PC or compatible with at least 256 kilobytes of memory, DOS 2.0 or later and a floppy disk.
Publisher: POP Computer Products, P.O. Box 1389, Evergreen, Colo. 80439. Phone: (303) 674-0200.
XTreePro Gold
A powerful $129 program from which to run your programs and manage your files.
Features: View list of all files on all drives at once; see directory structures and disk use statistics; view, search and copy contents of word processing, spreadsheet and database files; run programs; copy, move, delete, rename and archive files and directories.
Requirements: IBM PC or compatible with at least 256 kilobytes of memory and DOS 3.1 or later. Meant for hard-disk use, but also works with floppies.
Publisher: XTree Co., 4330 Santa Fe Road, San Luis Obispo, Calif. 93401. Phone: (805) 541-0604.
