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A history of suing one's employer does not generally bode well for future employment opportunities.

Yeah, just ask Darl McBride - who sued former employer IKON Office Solutions for breach of contract before moving on to PointServe (where I worked briefly as Chief Architect before leaving over disagreements with the management direction of the company), Franlin Covey (where I used to buy planners before I went electronic), and SCO (where I never bought anything, especially their lawsuit against IBM). Nonetheless, it's probably best to not ask "what's your insurance coverage for employee lawsuits?" early in the interview process.

I use Outlook 2003 with the FranklinCovey tools ("Seven Habits of Highly Effective People") installed. Being able to organize tasks across a 3x3 matrix of "importance" vs. "urgency", having master and daily task lists, etc. seems like it will be very useful for me with respect to getting organized, ensuring that I deliver what I commit to, etc. An additional nifty feature is associating notes that you take in a meeting with the meeting, and giving you a master list of the notes you've taken... ahhh.
If you have Outlook, you can download Plan Plus for a 30 day trial here.
I'm not an agent or representative of the company either, I just think it's a pretty good tool.
-Matt

How about the Logitech Io. I bought one when it was originally released, and I am quite pleased. Basically, it captures notes that you write with the pen, which can later be synched up with the computer. The new software also has a demo of a handwriting-to-text program that works quite well. The only drawback is the price- $140-$200 for the pen depending on where you look, and about $20 for 3 notebooks. Also, you can get the FranklinCovey iScribe package, which includes planner pages and syncs with outlook. Also, no linux support.

I've been using it for the last year and a half in college, and it is great to be able to take notes all in one notebook. When the data is uploaded, the computer automagically sorts the pages (as the notebook has a subject box on each page). I can then easily email them to my friends who missed class, and print them out 4 on a page. Its really quite neat, and unfortunate that not too many people take advantage of it.

Oh yeah, you can buy it here on ThinkGeek.

I have an actual Tablet PC that I use every day, the Acer C110. It's a wonderful tool, but it is not designed for use in the sunlight. Heck, it's not even that good when I sit at a conference room with bright lights above the center of the table - sitting at the edge of the table looking down on a horizontal reflective screen reflects the lights overhead... However, I have the ability to prop up my screen with my old PDA, which solves the issue quite nicely. The angle is just enough to avoid the lights. :)

The TabletPC is a wonderful tool. I wouldn't give mine up for anything in the world. Well, maybe something with a greater monetary value that I really wanted, as I would then go and buy myself another TabletPC - they're not in short supply. ;) Anyway, this is not your best forum for TabletPC advice. I suggest you try heading over to TabletPCBuzz and use the forums there, you will find a TON of experts on the TabletPC.

Regardless of that, there's really a couple solutions:

a) If your application is a commercial app, designed to be run by just about anyone that chooses to purchase it, I'd suggest creating a "skins" menu for it, similar to the option within Franklin Covey's tabletplanner 3.0. This will allow your outdoor mostly users to pick a high contrast scheme, whereas the indoor users (or users who avoid using it until they are indoors) will pick a different one. Heck, even allow some form of button mapping to different schemes, mapped by default to your presets that test best under different conditions.

b) If you're targeting a vertical market and intend to design the whole solution, start to finish, I recall someone designed a TabletPC designed specifically for use outdoors. You could work that particular model into your design specs, and test your app out with the PC in question and the best looking/working colors, etc.

I apologize, as I do no recall what the specific model or maker was - I suggest you ask your question in the general forums at TabletPCBuzz. They will be able to provide you with further information.

Best of luck,

-Jack Ash

Project Name / {email|docs|notes|data|code} / Revision/files. Files are in yyyy_mm_dd_filename format with leading zeros filled. Then again.. I'm a DBA and nobody emails me, nobody calls me, blah. It works for data. There's no nice neat way to do it. I recently attended a franklin covey class and it really re-iterated a few things. Use one system, cross-reference, and keep it up to date. That's all I got out of the class because I think putting data on paper kills the data and it seems to be a real inefficient way to do things from a database standpoint.

So now, I run by the seat of my pants, 90 miles an hour with my ass on fire. I have one system that works. Put out the fires that'll get my ass burned. -B

Maybe my threshold is set too high, but I'm surprised more people haven't talked about paper planners. I use a Franklin planner and I love it. I started using it in college and still do. No handwriting recognition tricks, plenty of space to take notes for the day (need more space? add an extra page, it's not that hard), a to-do list that forces you to be aware of your to-dos because forwarding them up a day requires you to re-copy them by hand...

While I admit it would be nice to have the data in electronic format to easily transfer to other uses, I don't really feel the need to invest in a PDA. It just seems to inconvenient. And I'm no luddite, I couldn't live without my cell phone, which stores the phone numbers I need and I like to use. Though I'd like to get one of those Java-enabled phones and play with that a bit...

Oh, and for those who said they like to use the PDA as a gameboy: I don't dispute this use, but I have a gameboy advance (and I'm 26 and unashamed) and use it all the time. There is no comparison for the games -- they are great. No, I can't pull it out in meetings, but it's not like people don't know when you're playing PDA games.......

I am surprized that I haven't seen others mention this, but make sure you are getting the right education for you. People learn different, and you may of had a problem with the learning / study methods used at university.

There is a difference between difference schools, state vs. private universities, two and four colleges, polytechs, and distance education vs. correspondence. Research the options, and pick the right one for you.

In this day and age you do not need to attend classes in person to earn a meaniful degree, in UK, the Open University leads the way, and in Canada there is Athabasca University, I am not as familiar with US schools, but there is the University of Phoenix as well as many others.

Define your goal(s) of attending a post-secondary school. Also an idea for your career goals might be useful, but you need specific education goals. Write them down. I said, write them down. This is how you will evaluate schools, programme and course choices.

Is it just to have a degree? Do you want more a fundamential understanding (i.e. theoric) of computing? Do you want business skills? To become a better rounded software engineer? Understand business, so you can grow your own business? Get a MBA? Meet women? For technical training? To earn more money? Continue doing what you already do, or so you can do something new? Certification?

An university degree is suppose to be based upon a theorical understanding, which while being less specific (i.e. more abstract), is more lasting and will not be outdated every 3 years. That is the #1 source of frustration and confusion I see from young computer science students. An university degree is not a career training programme. You get to do the career training in your own time.

Make use of your electives, do not choose courses because you think they will be easy like "Rocks for Jocks" and "Clap for Credit", find introductary courses you will be interested in, and will benefit you either personally or professionally.

Most schools have some means of providing tours of their facilities, especially in the summer. Since this is an investment that will cost approx. $40,000, you should research this investment as being right for you. If possible, arrange a talk with someone from the department that you are looking at majoring in.

Bone up on time management and planning skills, and study skills if you find studying difficult. University is about learning, but unfortunately very little is taught about how best to learn (for you). Read Stephen R. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People it will help in setting your priorities, and planning. To help learn about learning, John L. Adams book Conceptual Blockbusting: Care and Feeding of Ideas, and George Polya's How to Solve It.

Practice reading, seriously if you do not do a lot of non-fiction book reading, start doing some more. A list of books any /.er should enjoy is Steven C. McConnell's Top 10 Reading List.

look at the Palm brand PDA's, people love them, but see them as below handspring, and many people with visors, don't use the attachments beyond a memory card and the occational GPS user...Sony is right up there with the Clie, but the proprietary memory stick, can't be used in anything but sony products, where CF and SD/MM cards are used commonly in cameras and cross platform applications. that's just a few, but you get the point.

now for pocket PC's(i.e. the bells and whistles). the ipaq and jornada are the frontrunners in this domain. jornada for the cheap, ipaq for the extragovant. features are about equal(voice recording, IR, pocketPC2002, mp3/mpeg playback, blah blah blah), but casio is overlooked for these more well known names. true, in the past they've put out some real shite, but the EM-500(newest undetermined model) has more features onboard than the equally priced ipaq 3835, including SD and CF slots, but do you need them?

my point is, go somewhere and ask what's available, tell them what you want and they'll tell you where to find it. if it's not out, save yourself a buck or two, and get something to tide you over till what you want is out.

/spammyy

Then I tried using it. I don't know if it is because it's Wince, whether I am a dyed-in-the-wool Franklin addict, or the state of the art isn't quite there yet, but the result was the same; I have never been more disorganized in my life. Since I couldn't use it as an organizer, it became a lame game machine, doing nothing but sucking up time. Worse, I can't hack it. I'm not buying a compiler for it, I can't find a Perl interperter for it, and you can't replace hardware boards. It's now sitting in the trunk of my car.

Part of what bugged me is that I can't set it up the way I want about it. The reason I stick with a dead-tree planner is that paper is infinitely hackable. The Wince box forced me to plan its way, which had nothing to do with the way I do things.

The other problem stems from the fact that a PDA is not an island. You need to sync it up with desktop stuff. That's well and fine by itself, but how good is the desktop stuff? The only thing I would consider would be the Pilot/Franklin Software combo, but the Franklin Planner desktop software is Windows-only.

The PDA technology just seems too limited and immature to help me. I figure it does help others, but it just doesn't work for me. I'll check the field out in a few years, but for now I am using dead trees until the twisted sand can do better.