Why do you like EssentialPIM?

General talks about EssentialPIM

Moderators: TerryRogers, Max

glenn59
Guru
Posts: 128
Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2008 10:30 pm
Location: USA, Southern Maryland
Has thanked: 33 times
Been thanked: 14 times

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by glenn59 »

I agree completely. The dev team will state straight up the truth regarding whether they intend to implement a suggestion or not. Even better, they will state their logical and practical reasoning for not putting something on the high priority list. As if that weren't impressive enough these days, they are willing to still consider further productive discussions and persuasions, and if there is enough support and sensibility to change their mind, they somehow manage to implement features not found anywhere else.
One example is the clock style selector for time entry which is so convenient. Another is the cross-linking feature which is so versatile. Instead of having an attachment here or there, one can link just about everything to just about everything anyway one needs to!
But, the number one reason I started using the product years ago, was they were one of a very few who understood some of us need to sync WITHOUT the clouds. No, not a secret agent, but there are laws regarding client information, and also patient private information. With EPIM, I can be 100% confident of NO leakage with USB cable sync, and convenience and security of WiFi sync.
Secondly, the backups of the database allow for one to feel confident of limited loss of critical data, AND give one the assurance they can "experiment" with features, syncing, and those ideas to try, without the worry that if it "breaks" all is lost. It is way too easy to recover the database just as it was before a disastrous event.
Solid product, constantly improving, without the upgrades making things worse. And, they give all the appearance of sticking around for the long haul.
Yep, I'm a very satisfied, even happy customer!
EPIM Android Pro v5.7.4 -Samsung Galaxy S5(SM-G900V) - Android OS v5.0
EPIM Portable Pro V6.0 RC2 - Windows 7; XP
EPIM Desktop Pro V8.64 - Windows 7
Tester
Expert
Posts: 95
Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2021 5:38 pm
Location: Austria
Has thanked: 17 times
Been thanked: 8 times

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by Tester »

I am still a beginner with EssentialPIM (using it for Notes) but I can already definitely say that I like the following:

- Formatting is kept almost perfectly when pasting something from MS Word or when importing a rtf-file (line-hights, colors, tables etc.etc.).

- A very good search function.

- A perfect appearance of the fonts in the editor window. Not the terrible faint gray with missing contrast und too much brightness in general as it has become standard in so many other apps.

- Easy and comfortable to use.

All of this very important for me - and difficult to find in other similar programs, especially altogether in combination :wink: .
Haldex
Guru
Posts: 148
Joined: Mon May 24, 2021 3:53 pm
Has thanked: 25 times
Been thanked: 5 times

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by Haldex »

Hello

Although my wish, which is of fundamental importance (see viewtopic.php?p=117824#p117824 ) has not yet been fulfilled, I would like to share my impression of EPM.

I find the user interface of EPIM clear, simple and well arranged. I have tried to get out of Outlook's noose with many different software, but I have not yet succeeded. Because some functionality is not yet available, or the programme simply does not run smoothly.

Despite my very frustrating experience with the calendar stew (see post above), I have to say that I am still very taken with EPIM. The calendar has everything it needs in terms of presentation, except for the separate administration of different calendars (see viewtopic above).

The hierarchical tasks are simply amazing. Nevertheless, you can synchronise them on the iPhone. Which is very good and also necessary. It is simply important to remember that the information that is available on the PC in the office must also be available on the road. Nowadays, it is no longer possible to imagine work with customer without this.

The hierarchical notes are also a great help, especially with the Postit function on the desktop. Here now, these notes should also be available on the iPhone. It's a great pity not to have this information with you on the go. I am also specifically talking about the iPhone, because this smartphone also really works all the time. Android is not really an alternative for me.

I didn't find any noteworthy shortcomings with the emails either. On the contrary, I have been able to set everything up so that it runs smoothly. Here, one could perhaps create a collective inbox, where one would have an overview of all the inboxes and sent messages from all the accounts (for me, there are eight). That would be a wish, but not absolutely necessary for survival. But in combination with the function of having the emails displayed by sender, this would be a clear added value (see iOS email client Unibox). To describe it again, all emails are sorted 1. by sender and then 2. by date received or sent.

In this sense, keep it up, very good! But I am really waiting for the feature mentioned above.
Win 11 Prof 64 Bit, 16 GB, 11th Gen Intel i7-11390H 3.4 GHz
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 15574
Joined: Thu Nov 25, 2004 3:12 am
Has thanked: 1407 times
Been thanked: 977 times

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by admin »

Thanks for your review! A unified inbox feature is coming in EPIM 9.9, which is due in a week or so.
Android version of EssentialPIM. Keep all your data in sync!
MrSoder
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Dec 13, 2021 12:36 pm
Location: Stockholm
Contact:

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by MrSoder »

I feel its very intuative to use, even for noobs =)
ChrisWalton
Novice
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue May 14, 2013 7:55 pm
Been thanked: 2 times

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by ChrisWalton »

The new feature of multiple calendars is a very valuable feature for me. I find that the following are synergistic for me:
1 the ability to assign each calendar a colour
2 the existing feature of assigning colours to categories
3 the capability to switch the calendars into or out of view
4 the facility to have repeating tasks and appointments
5 the ability to store appointments templates which specify the category and calendar.
Together they supercharge my use of EPIM. They provide me with a whole matrix of calendars, appointments, and tasks (if assigned to a calendar) while minimising appropriately the clutter of extensive items stored in the calendars.
Thank you very much for this major upgrade. If I had thought it might even be possible, I would have asked for it a long time ago. As it is, I did think it impossible, and never requested it. I currently have 3 calendars, and anticipate, when I have finished upgrading my processes, having 7-8 calendars.
rainbow
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat Nov 05, 2022 6:19 am
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by rainbow »

I love the password feature. And I love the way the task manager works. Also love the ease of customization.
User avatar
Li0n13
Novice
Posts: 33
Joined: Sun Dec 26, 2021 10:11 am
Has thanked: 5 times
Been thanked: 5 times

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by Li0n13 »

My favorite and most usable feature is Notes.
Tabs and trees are indeed very convenient.
And the best is the unique feature - the full-text search with live results.
MetalDrop
Guru
Posts: 866
Joined: Sat Apr 09, 2016 10:19 pm
Been thanked: 189 times

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by MetalDrop »

Haven't been here in a while. One reason for that is EPIM has become a "backup" application for me.

Since it broke support for my writing tools in notes: ProWritingAid Anywere, AHK Typing Assistant, and WordWeb lookups I had to move the majority of my work to other programs as the organization features EPIM offered where outweighed by the inconvenience of having to copy>past>copy>past notes frequently piled up.

Add that on top of the fact note revision history never came, and I just naturally had to move away to a system that played nice with my core third party programs and had revision history as it became a more and more important feature as my writing progressed.
EPIM Portable Pro Running/Tested On: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit US-ENG|i5-6400+Quadro P620|i7-7700K+1050ti|i7-8700K+970GTX|AMD 5600x+1080ti|16GB+RAM&NVMe SSDs
[I'm helpful and often reply to questions, however I am just a fellow user and not staff.]
Lee S
Beta Team
Posts: 291
Joined: Thu Feb 17, 2005 7:39 pm
Been thanked: 15 times

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by Lee S »

One of the items I look forward to is my daily routine is when I receive the email from EssentialPIM with the blog. In my busy life I often overlook the positives because of being busy with other things. It gives me a break and forces me to look at the latest items in EPIM that I might incorporate in my lifestyle. This is especially true of the latest updates and versions.
Thank You
DG
Beta Team
Posts: 443
Joined: Mon Aug 08, 2005 1:31 pm
Location: Georgia, USA
Has thanked: 16 times
Been thanked: 33 times

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by DG »

Lee S, thank you for your remarks about the blog. I write the posts and am delighted to hear you look forward to them. If there is ever a subject or feature you'd like to see us cover, please let us know.

Regards.
DG
Beta Team
Posts: 443
Joined: Mon Aug 08, 2005 1:31 pm
Location: Georgia, USA
Has thanked: 16 times
Been thanked: 33 times

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by DG »

@MetalDrop,

I'm curious about a couple of points in your latest post. You mentioned EPIM broke support for several writing tools, including WordWeb lookups. I use WordWeb with EPIM and have no trouble. How has yours broken?

You also mention that "note revision history never came." EPIM has a versions history for notes and other items. Right-click on a note, select properties, and go to the Previous Versions tab. Are you looking for something different?

Thanks for helping me understand.
MetalDrop
Guru
Posts: 866
Joined: Sat Apr 09, 2016 10:19 pm
Been thanked: 189 times

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by MetalDrop »

DG wrote: Tue May 09, 2023 7:24 pm @MetalDrop,

I'm curious about a couple of points in your latest post. You mentioned EPIM broke support for several writing tools, including WordWeb lookups. I use WordWeb with EPIM and have no trouble. How has yours broken?

You also mention that "note revision history never came." EPIM has a versions history for notes and other items. Right-click on a note, select properties, and go to the Previous Versions tab. Are you looking for something different?

Thanks for helping me understand.
First: Oops, looks like I put this in the wrong section. I was making it rather fast. Since I was asked why I no longer promote nor use EPIM by a friend despite being a major user and advocate for years, and since I used to be a heavy user of the forum I figured I should add my reasoning here.

Wordweb: 3 out of 4 look ups fail to capture the word in notes. Capture was more likely to succeed with some fonts and shorter notes. I'm not sure why note length matters but once a note gets over 1,000~ish words WordWeb seems to drastically loss the ability to capture words.
Other third party tools I use can't track the position or data in notes. After the "Zoom" feature was added, the notes no longer functioned properly with most third party tools as they appear to be superimposed and not actually transfer data between layers properly nor expose the text properly. Example: Windows Narrator reads notes as "pane" and nothing more. Wordweb uses it's fall back OCR method with EPIM which is one of the reasons it fails so much, as the zoom feature also messed up the rendering of many fonts which causes OCR to fail frequently.

It's been talked about—a lot on the forum, at least was at one point; "Previous Versions" simply don't act like good reversion history. It is step history which is near useless to situations when you need real reversion history. Having 9999 painfully minor steps is a nightmare situation that happens frequently with EPIM and large notes. It's also not reliable, I've had "previous version" data vanish on me, even when I'm absolutely sure it was there previously. Which I'm not the only one, I've seen that mentioned several times on the forum and elsewhere.

Overall step history is good for fixing errors when Ctrl+Z fails or tracking small or infrequent changes, but is not suitable to store, track, and manage larger reversions.

As another note: I was also having issues with EPIM not saving data in notes at the end, which was one of my final straws with it. Hopefully, that's been fixed, I haven't actually used EPIM for nearly a year. On network databases I would Ctrl+A -> Ctrl+V -> Close EPIM to update important notes in a hurry and come back to find nothing had been saved. Which had never been a problem up until that point, but because of all the other little things I was already ready to pack up my data and move on rather than figure out the problem.

At least beyond the usual sync data to a new database and use a fresh EPIM, which didn't work. Which I was also getting rather tired of having to sync my database to a new databases 6-12 times a year to fix major issues. Database stability is a major issue in EPIM that really needs to be addressed at some point.

The most common thing that happened was that quick search and Ctrl+F find would break often and that was always fixed by syncing to a new database.

Since migrating to other systems I've had no stability issues at all, no lost data, all my third party tools work. I do have to use 3 programs instead of one, but the sheer amount of time and stress I've saved has been well worth it.

On one final note, since I do watch update logs even though I'm not using EPIM anymore (I still use a portable copy of v6 for legacy data, as later versions never could handle super large databases as well) I'm also pretty sure the security issues in EPIM mail reported years ago have yet to be fixed. I always liked EPIMs mail interface, but it's lack of security and safety drove me away from it long before I stopped using EPIM for notes. If the security issues and concerns were ever actually addressed I'd move email back to EPIM for sure.
EPIM Portable Pro Running/Tested On: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit US-ENG|i5-6400+Quadro P620|i7-7700K+1050ti|i7-8700K+970GTX|AMD 5600x+1080ti|16GB+RAM&NVMe SSDs
[I'm helpful and often reply to questions, however I am just a fellow user and not staff.]
kb5cth
Guru
Posts: 269
Joined: Wed Dec 19, 2012 2:36 pm
Has thanked: 2 times
Been thanked: 15 times

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by kb5cth »

All,

I recently noticed that the only posts I make here are complaints. That doesn't tell the correct story about my relationship with EPIM...

EPIM is my "Go to" program. It opens with my computer each morning and is my first interaction with my day. I check my calendar, email and task list VERY often. I use Android EPIM as both an intake for appointments and as a reminder tool for those same appointments when they occur. Without a readily available password list, I wouldn't be able to interact with the rest of the world. My notes contain my medication list, passwords to all of my software, directions to favorite destinations...almost everything.

Right now, I couldn't maintain my current quality of life without the EPIM programs (both Windows and Android) and owe the team at Astonsoft a debt of gratitude.

Forgive me my occasional grumpiness, I truly appreciate all that the people of this forum, the company and its products provide.

Thank You,

Bill L
User avatar
ecsaltz
Guru
Posts: 644
Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 12:14 pm
Location: Durham, North Carolina, USA
Has thanked: 30 times
Been thanked: 76 times

Re: Why do you like EssentialPIM?

Post by ecsaltz »

kb5cth wrote: Fri Jul 14, 2023 12:18 pm All,

I recently noticed that the only posts I make here are complaints. That doesn't tell the correct story about my relationship with EPIM...

EPIM is my "Go to" program. It opens with my computer each morning and is my first interaction with my day. I check my calendar, email and task list VERY often. I use Android EPIM as both an intake for appointments and as a reminder tool for those same appointments when they occur. Without a readily available password list, I wouldn't be able to interact with the rest of the world. My notes contain my medication list, passwords to all of my software, directions to favorite destinations...almost everything.

Right now, I couldn't maintain my current quality of life without the EPIM programs (both Windows and Android) and owe the team at Astonsoft a debt of gratitude.

Forgive me my occasional grumpiness, I truly appreciate all that the people of this forum, the company and its products provide.

Thank You,

Bill L
I agree in all aspects. I have used EPIM since 2008, and have not seen a better program that is both desktop and cell phone capable.
PC Desktop: Window 11 Pro, 34 inch 4K monitor.
Cell phone: Verizon Wireless Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, Android 12 - linked with Garmin Fenix 6 Pro wrist watch and Fitbit Sense wrist watch.
Post Reply