Noto Personal Organizer

From Windows Gadgets, Inc.; free for 30 days, $39.95 to purchase

Summary: A stylish mini-personal organizer inside a loose-leaf notebook user interface

Requirements: Windows 2000/XP, Vista

When I first started playing with Noto Personal Organizer, the first mind-association I had was, mini-Outlook.

While that overarching description isn’t entirely off the mark, it is too overgeneralized to do this small but useful productivity tool complete justice. That’s because with the exception of email, Noto Personal Organizer handles many Outlook functions in a significantly different presentation mode than Outlook does.

Noto Personal Organizer’s key distinction is a folder-based organization that rather than depend on standard folders accessed via file menus, are reached by section tabs. All applications appear inside a loose-leaf notebook user interface.

These tabbed sections offer access to an extensive persnal organizer, with appointments configureable and viewable by day, week, month, and type of project. These are easily flippable by means of the selcction bars. And each appointment can be programmed with an audible alarm that you can set to go off at specified intervals before that appointment (such as a phone call you have previously scheduled) needs to happen.

Noto also offers capabilities more often associated with PDAs than with desktop productivity tools.

There’s a calculator, a built-in MP3 player with several skins of your choosing, as well as a mind-twisting game you can fiddle with while you are experiencing those altogether too-rare idle moments.