FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The First Major Organizer Comes to Mac OS X
Park City, UT – October 16th, 2001 — Chronos LC today proudly announced
Personal Organizer 4.0, the first and only modern organizer for Mac OS 8,
9, and X. Personal Organizer 4.0 delivers where it really counts. According
to Jerry Halls, V.P. of Sales at Chronos, “Personal Organizer 4.0 is like a
fine sports car. It’s fast. It’s easy to use. And it’s great looking. It
makes you want to get organized!”
Chronos calls its product the “Swiss Army Knife” of productivity software.
It integrates a calendar, address book, word processor, memo taker,
personal journal, phone dialer, and alarm clock into a single easy-to-use
application. To top it off, it synchronizes with all Palm and Handspring
handheld organizers. Personal Organizer 4.0 is a modern organizer with
modern underpinnings-not decade old legacy code. This allows it to
integrate all the above features in a single application which incorporates
technologies like the internet, speech, e-mail, Aqua, English translation,
and Mac OS X. Users only have to learn one application, not two or more.
A previous version of Personal Organizer won the Macworld Eddy Award as
“Best Data Management Product.” How could an already great product be
improved upon? When Chronos engineers set about developing version 4.0,
everything they did had to conform to a specific philosophy: 1) Make it
feature-rich; 2) Make it fast; 3) Make it easy to use; and 4) Make it
beautiful.
MAKE IT FEATURE-RICH
——————–
Personal Organizer 4.0 adds a wealth of new features including a built-in
customizable spell checker which will spell check word processing
documents, journal entries, memos and notes.
A new completely resizable Button Bar sports drag and drop customization
allowing quick access to program features. Favorite applications may even
be dragged to it from the Finder. The Button Bar may be oriented
horizontally or vertically. Plus, users may place an unlimited number of
Button Bars on the screen at once using different orientations, sizes, and
buttons.
Like Mac OS X, a Personal Organizer file can contain multiple user
accounts. A custom picture can now be assigned to each user account in a
file including public accounts. Account pictures make it easy to
distinguish who an activity or contact belongs to whether it be mom, dad,
or the family. A new progress dialog now prominently displays which account
is being opened and the file it belongs to.
Over 30 new features have been added including a new Administration dialog,
an auto-open account feature, new Account Bars, new Palm Sync Setup, HTML
online help, adjustable mini-calendars in the Day View, default account
options, a Switch Primary Account dialog, and much, much more.
MAKE IT FAST
————
The speed of nearly every aspect of Personal Organizer 4.0 has been
dramatically improved. Depending on the computer, files open and close 200%
to 1000% faster than the previous version. Files import 300% faster.
Modifying the attributes of record batches occurs 300% faster. Mirror files
and backups save 500% faster. And finally, Personal Organizer now
synchronizes with Palm connected organizers 400% faster.
MAKE IT EASY TO USE
——————-
A new Account Administration Wizard makes setting up Personal Organizer
easier than ever. The new wizard makes it easy to create private and public
accounts complete with account pictures. The wizard steps users through
assigning access privileges and includes a new feature for specifying which
accounts should automatically be opened for each user.
The new Palm Sync Setup Wizard offers best in class synchronization setup
and management making it easier than ever to synchronize Personal Organizer
with a Palm handheld. The wizard uniquely solves category synchronization
issues by actually asking the Palm handheld which categories are being
used. The user can then select the categories to synchronize which
eliminates the all or nothing problem most PIMs face. Personal Organizer
can even synchronize memos, a common deficiency in other PIM products.
A new Account Bar displays which file is open as well as the account(s)
being accessed. Users may quickly and easily open additional accounts via a
new dialog. This dialog does not require the user to enter a name or
password since Personal Organizer 4.0 uses a new security mechanism based
on access privileges rather than passwords.
Personal Organizer 4.0 comes with a new comprehensive HTML-based online
help system. The help is based on the 250+ page Personal Organizer
Reference manual and is fully searchable using Apple’s Sherlock technology.
Personal Organizer 4.0 retains its one-of-a-kind context-sensitive RealHelp
system.
MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL
—————–
Personal Organizer 4.0 is stunning. It incorporates Mac OS X’s standard
Aqua interface elements and then takes things to the next level. The Day
and Multiday Views display appointments as aqua objects. Banners in the
Month View appear as aqua bars. The Button Bar and Account Bar use
photo-realistic icons which are resizable from small to very large sizes
including 128×128 pixels.
Personal Organizer 4.0 comes with several new interface themes or skins
which handsomely customize the look and feel of the software. Version 4.0
ships with 8 new background pictures and 23 new account pictures.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
——————-
Personal Organizer 4.0 requires Mac OS 8.6 or above including Mac OS X. The
application takes 13 MB of disk space and runs in as little as 5000 K RAM.
PURCHASE
——–
Chronos believes users should have the opportunity to try the software for
free before they purchase. A 30 day trial version can be downloaded from
Chronos’ completely redesigned website at www.chronosnet.com. Personal
Organizer 4.0 may be purchased for $59.99.
Current Personal Organizer users may upgrade to version 4.0 for only
$39.99. For an additional $10 they can get StickyBrain, “the best utility
you never knew you needed.” For more information visit Chronos at
www.chronosnet.com. Special note: Group Organizer 4.0 will be released the
week of October 22, 2001. Details will be forthcoming then.