A dogged view of contact managers

Every time those pinhead software reviewers from the PC press try to find the best program in its category to award the maximum number of stars, mice or brownie points to, you have to wonder what they’re smoking in the newsroom.

Giving software the star treatment sure sells ads, but does it help the business traveler make an informed buying decision? Not really.

Consider contact managers, the little programs that let you store addresses and track schedules. Depending on which write-up you read, you might be left with the impression that one product is superior to another – whether you’re a lawyer or a sales professional or a chief executive.

It would be a wrong impression, unfortunately. Choosing a contact manager is more like buying a dog, really. You can’t run the Iditarod with Chihuahuas, and you wouldn’t want to live in a Manhattan studio apartment with a St. Bernard. Same with contact managers: each has its strengths and weaknesses.

So as a counterpoint to all those tired software reviews, here’s the canine perspective on contact managers:

ACT 4.0 (Symantec) — The Labrador

List price: $199.95

It’s good-natured, easy to get along with, and it loves to play fetch. That’s a Labrador I’m talking about — and its contact manager counterpart, ACT. The Windows version is perhaps the most user-friendly program of its kind out of the box. I was up and running within minutes, taking advantage of really neat features for frequent travelers, like Internet, e-mail and fax functions.

But don’t try this puppy on a Macintosh. Symantec appears to be dubious about the future of Steve Jobs’ operating system, and their Mac version reflects those doubts. ACT 2.6 is a shadow of its Windows-based relative. Not at all worth the $169.99 you’d have to shell out. (Think of it as paying big bucks for a pedigree and ending up with a mutt.)

If you get the real thing you probably won’t regret it. Like a good Lab, ACT is smart. It sends out intelligent “agents” on the Internet to collect information about the contacts stored in your files, often hunting for data that you wouldn’t have known to look for. E-mail addresses, press releases, Web pages and other information is then culled into the contact manager. It’s kind of like throwing a stick into a lake; Rover jumps in and returns with a fish.

Who should consider ACT? If you’re a consultant or work in financial services or the real estate business, and you’re using the Wintel platform, you might give it a try. It’s ideal for the single user, although some more expensive versions will support up to 20 people on a server.

GoldMine 4.0 (GoldMine) — The Golden Retriever

List Price: $295

Maybe you can’t buy a friend, to paraphrase the adage, but you can buy a dog. Or a contact manager like GoldMine. While this canine shares many of the same features as ACT, it’s different in several important respects. In addition to offering the fax, Internet and e-mail functions that make ACT so appealing, it gives you the ability to do forecasting and elementary data mining – features that blue-chip corporations shell out lotsa clams for.

But this Golden Retriever needs to be trained – or more to the point, you need to be trained – when you adopt it. Don’t expect to load it up and start using it right away like ACT. It’s so packed with advanced features that, according to one reseller, new users should turn all the bells and whistles off, and then slowly activate them as they become necessary.

If you don’t have the patience to learn a new program, this might not be an ideal place to start. GoldMine intimidated me because it forced me to think about my data differently. Rather than treat information as something to be filed away and later retrieved, it handles contacts as opportunities to be harvested. When the data is shared with other users on a network, GoldMine really blossoms. As a single user, however, I found that I got comparable results from ACT.

Who should get GoldMine? This program’s got “sales” written all over it, and although it has applications in other areas, I think the most effective results will come if you’ve got a product or service to hawk. The more users, the better.

Eudora Planner 4.0 (Qualcomm) — The Husky

List Price: $79

Hard-working, reliable and intuitive, Eudora’s Planner is the sled dog of the contact managers. Its what-you-see-is-what-you-get qualities, not to mention its competitive list price, make it an excellent choice for two kinds of travelers: folks who are just want a no-frills solution to their contact needs. And Macintosh users. (I know the Mac OS is on less than 10 percent of all personal computers, but that’s not a license to shut its users out.)

Planner is the offspring of the defunct Now Contact manager, which Qualcomm recently acquired. It inherited a lot of the clever functionality of Now Contact – for example, the program can “finish” an address or phone number entry based on information you’ve already input, thus saving you time – but has evolved considerably. Planner is more integrated with the Internet than its predecessor, and the calendaring functions are less clunky than they used to be on Now.

One of the most thoughtful things about this Husky – at least as far as business travelers are concerned – is not what it does when it’s downloaded, but what it does when you haven’t even double-clicked the program icon. A small menu option lets you search your complete address list any time your computer is turned on. ACT recently added a similar function, called Side Act, but Planner’s is better.

Who should give Planner a try? Mac users will find this one indispensable, at least until the cross-platform version of GoldMine is available. With no forecasting tools worth mentioning, Planner isn’t the strongest candidate for someone who wants to do sales. Professionals who just want to store and retrieve their data, as well as digitize their calendar, will like this canine.

There is no one best standalone contact manager for every user, just like there is no one best dog for every person. I spoke with product managers at Qualcomm, GoldMine and Symantec for this story, and they readily agreed with me.

Which one do I use? Well, before I answer, let me mention one thing. If I had very little time and used a Windows PC, I’d buy ACT in a heartbeat. As it is, I use a Mac, and therefore am partial to Planner. However, I envy the functionality of GoldMine, and although I’d probably never use the wonderful functions of that Golden Retriever, I often wish I had its tools.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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