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I know that one of the most pressing problems in your life has been worry over whether The Next Thing has been updated and you've gone and missed it. I can't help you with your other little problems, but if you click on the link over to the right, that says "Subscribe to The Next Thing by email", I can make sure you never miss another post.

Well, as long as you don't change your email address.

And as long as you remember to check your email.

And as long as nothing goes wrong with any of the zillion (ok, 3) servers involved.

One email each day I post something new. If I don't post, no email. If I post a hundred new articles, 1 email. Enjoy.

- Trevor.
2008-02-17
Richfield, UT

Franklin Covey PlanPlus for Outlook v 5.0

This is like a placeholder post so you'll know I'm not gone.

I'm still trying to get PlanPlus for Outlook version 5.0 to work on my new (Vista) computer. It takes up all of my free time because I depend on that program so much. I don't have much free time, a couple hours a week. After I get it working and have my task list back, I am going to work hard to find an alternative, as the last few versions of Franklin Covey's productivity software have been horrible, and getting worse. Even some of the tech support pages admit to allowing data to be created (like a to-do task) that will not be retrievable because of how it was created. They apologize, and say they can't do anything about it because of the way Outlook is programmed. It's true that they can't make it retrievable, but it doesn't seem like it would take much to keep it from being created that way in the first place. There are other programming problems with it that allow data to easily get lost - not much of a feature in a program you're counting on to help you remember things.

As I write this I'm letting PlanPlus try to open - it took about two hours to load my task list after I got it to work right, then I re-booted and tried again to see if it would still work. It looks like it might be working, and it's only been 45 minutes! :-|.

This was originally meant to be just a placeholder post, but I guess it turned into a review of Franklin Covey's productivity software. On any scale from 1 to anything I give it a 1. On the thumb scale it would be two down. Because I have Google Ad-Sense on the site, there may even be an ad for this software on this page. PLEASE do not think I did that on purpose. I would recommend Franklin Covey's books, and their paper planners. But NEVER would I recommend their software. Any efficiency gains are more than made up for in installation and tech-support hassles - and don't forget the cavalier attitude about data integrity.

- Trevor.
Whitestown, IN
2008-02-09 (Happy Birthday to me...)