Best Free PIM

There are countless personal information management (PIM) programs. ;-)

A comprehensive one might include personal notes, a journal, contacts (address book), calendar and events, task and project management, email, and even more. One of the critical components for me is scheduling repeating tasks, something that is strangely missing from many PIMs.

If your needs are basic, there are some simple programs that might fit your needs. Otherwise, you'll need a program that includes all the elements that are important to all you.

What about web-based PIMs? 37 Signals provides one of, if not the best cloud PIM suites. Of course it's not all free. I do use their free Highrise contact manager in conjunction with the Toodledo task manager for my simple PIM needs. Toodledo has a nice comparison chart, which shows how it stacks up against many of the popular web-based task managers.

GQueues is another nice example of an online task manager. I'm trying it out in parallel with Toodledo, and we'll see which one I end up with. :-)

Full programs

Palm Desktop is designed specifically for use with Palm devices but works perfectly well all by itself. It's an excellent full function PIM -- if you think Microsoft Outlook without the email client you'll get the general idea. Naturally a few things such as "Synchronize" don't work without an attached Palm device but most functions work just fine.

Note 1: It's becoming more difficult to find the download page for Palm Desktop. You'll probably find it by searching for "Desktop" under support.

Note 2: This is a YOYO (you're on your own) product. Now that HP has acquired Palm, there are sure to changes in the status of Palm Desktop. The new webOS products -- Veer, Pre -- are effectively on a new platform, putting the old Palm products  in "legacy status".

Note 3: The most reasonable reading of the Palm Desktop EULA is that you are allowed to use Palm Desktop as a stand-alone program on a PC, but you are prohibited from using it to sync with something other than a Palm product. There's a more detailed discussion in one of the comments below.

Pimero is a new entry in the free PIM category. It offers the full range of PIM functions -- appointments, events, reminders, tasks, contacts, email, and even webfeeds -- and an attractive, well-organized user interface. It's a modestly crippled version of an actively-maintained commercial application. I think it would be an efficient program to use. The commercial version offers very nice data export, but there is no way to export your data from the free version. You cannot create repeating tasks either if that's important to you.

EssentialPIM is another full-featured alternative. It also does many of the same things as Outlook and can import your Outlook data and/or Outlook Express contacts as well. There is no way to schedule repeating to-dos, but by creating an all day repeating "task" (which is essentially an appointment) you can effectively create a repeating to-do which begins before the day grid.

Evolution for Windows has been ported from Linux to Windows. Evolution is a full-featured PIM, whose main feature is being a free alternative to Microsoft Outlook. It can syncronize with several protocols, including Microsoft Exchange. Evolution is a comprehensive PIM (and it takes a while to load). Like many PIMs, it has no good way to schedule repetive tasks, which rules it out for me. That is not a problem for many users.

Chandler is in a category by itself. If you're looking for a PIM that will help get your life and work flow under control, you might find that Chandler is a good fit. Chandler was launched by the legendary Mitch Kapor, creator of Lotus 1-2-3. It has shaped up to become a good nerve center for managing your events, tasks and notes in conjunction with your email. Chandler handles repetitive tasks very nicely.

Chandler is a task-centered program for managing all your related information. It is based on a couple of underlying realities: 1) You can only work on a finite number of things today, yet you also need to manage your attention to the things that come later. 2) Much of your workload is driven by or coordinated via email. The key to making it flow is to integrate your events, tasks, calendar, notes and email in a way that lets you view them in natural contexts that match the way you actually work.

Chandler is reasonably effective for collaboration. It imports external SMTP email accounts, Google calendars and Highrise tasks; exports calendars and tasks; and mail messages can be edited, added to, and sent directly from Chandler.

I realize that I haven't described Chandler well enough for you to understand it. It's something you have to try for yourself because it's based on a new concept. The essence is that Chandler brings together all the elements of your work flow.

The Chandler website has some good descriptions and demos to get the concepts across. If you need to make your work less chaotic and more efficient, Chandler could be the paradigm changer you need.

Other full-featured PIMs

PIM Xtreme would be a good choice if you want to tinker with the program interface, and the way that tasks, events, and contacts are organized and interconnected. It also has a calendar, notes, and a "Today Panel" that gives you a nice overview. PIM Xtreme has a build-it-yourself user interface. Tasks, events, contacts, notes, etc., have their own window pane, and you size and arrange them to fit your needs.

Simple programs:

If your personal information management (PIM) needs are basic, there are some simple programs that might fit your needs. Which one depends on whether you need task and event management, contact management or both.

QuotePad is a nice little task manager that makes a splendid replacement for sticky notes. I've wanted something like this ever since the Internet came along. It docks at the top or side of your screen in a small 3 pixel line waiting to pop up a reminder (they can be repeating), or for when you want to add a note or reminder. What I like best is capturing a bit of text from a webpage as a note, along with the URL of the page I'm on, just by using a keystroke. It's a Windows program, and I'm running it on 64-bit Windows 7.

UK's Kalender is a simple calendar program from Denmark with nice task and event (no provision for contacts) management. It is easy to learn how to use UK's Kalender. It passes my acid test for PIMs by having a variety of ways to handle repeating tasks and events.

Kurlo and Open Contacts are contact management programs (address books). They both provide space for extensive information about your contacts. You can also use Kurlo to send email messages directly, and Kurlo also has a delayed email sending feature.

Users of Thunderbird (email client) would be better off with the Lightning version of Sunbird. This Thunderbird extension integrates calendaring features directly into the Thunderbird interface, thus combining contact management, email and calendaring in one window to give you better work flow.