Best Free PIM

If you needs are basic there’s Sunbird [1]. It’s a small, resource efficient calendaring application and has a really neat feature that displays your to-do list for the day on your desktop . However it really is a bit minimal. Users of the Thunderbird email client would be better off with the Lightning extension [2] rather than Sunbird as it integrates calendaring features directly into the Thunderbird interface.

If you want more features, check out EssentialPIM [3]. It does many of the same things as Outlook and will import your Outlook data as well.

Abassis Work Desktop [4] is a $59 commercial PIM and project manager that’s available to individuals for non-commercial use. It’s a pretty impressive product that offers contact management, calendaring, to-lists, reminders, document filing and simple project management. Backup is built into the product. The only thing I could see that was missing was an integrated email client.

Yet another alternative is the PalmOne Desktop program [5]. The program is designed specifically for use with Palm devices but it 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. I only did a quick check-out rather than a full review but what I saw seemed pretty solid. Naturally a few things such as “Synchronize” don’t work without an attached Palm device but most functions work just fine. I also checked the licensing agreement and while it’s a little ambiguous I suspect its OK for personal use. Indeed, I can’t see Palm objecting as it may well encourage you to buy one of their hand-helds. ;>)

[1] http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird.html Free Open Source, Windows 2000 and later, 5.8MB
[2] http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/
[3] http://www.essentialpim.com/ (1.2MB)
[4] http://www.abassis.com/index.html Free for non commercial use, All Windows versions, 1.7MB
[5] http://www.palm.com/us/software/desktop/ Free for personal use, Windows NT SP6 or later plus Mac OS X, 42MB.

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