*****  Computer Select, January 1994  : Articles *****

Journal:    PC World  Dec 1993 v11 n12 p120(1)
COPYRIGHT PC World Communications Inc. 1993
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Title:     Point-and-click PIM is simplicity itself.
             (Arabesque Software Ecco Simplicity)
Author:    Desmond, Michael


Abstract:  Arabesque Software's $149 Ecco Simplicity is a scaled-down
           version of its powerful Ecco Professional personal information
           management system (PIM) that retains much of the power of its
           sibling but is far easier to use. It has a convenient
           point-and-click interface and is laid out like a traditional
           day planner, with push-button controls for most tasks.
           Simplicity keeps a spreadsheet-like table of contact records
           in its address book; users enter company name, fax number and
           work phone in columns. The program keeps records in
           alphabetically-tabbed listings as in a paper-based address
           book. Simplicity shares its file format with Ecco Professional
           and includes the Shooter function for moving data to and from
           the PIM.
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Full Text:

The benefits of a PIM, without the complexity. Simplicity lowers the
learning curve and still delivers powerful features and flexibility.

Arabesque Software: 800/457-4243, 206/869-9600
List price: $149 ($79 introductory offer through the end of 1993)

Arabesque Software gained critical acclaim with its powerful Ecco
Professional personal information management program.

Unfortunately, the depth of the program's features and highly flexible
interface confounded many users. Enter Ecco Simplicity, a scaled-down
version of Arabesque's flagship product that delivers much of the power,
but little of the pain, that its big brother possessed.

Built around a calendar and an address book, Simplicity features an
efficient point-and-click interface that lets even the busiest
professional get up and running immediately. The calendar is laid out
like a traditional day planner and includes push-button controls for
scrolling through days, months, and years. You enter appointments
directly on the page and set recurring events by date, day of the week,
or other methods. The scheduler's alarm can play specific WAV sound files
for certain events, launch applications, and load files.

On the address-book side, Simplicity keeps a spreadsheetlike table of
contact records, with columns for company, name, fax number, and work
phone. Records are kept in alphabetically tabbed listings- as in a
paper-based address book- while an easy-to-use search engine lets you
find records by a variety of fields. If you have a modem, Simplicity's
auto-dial feature will call your contacts at the push of a button.
Particularly useful is the program's interactive import function, which
accepts comma-separated text files so you can quickly move your data from
other packages.

Ease of use remains a focus when you're working between Simplicity's
views or with other applications. To set up an appointment with a listed
contact, users simply click the appropriate address-book entry and drag
it to the scheduler- eliminating the need to retype data. Simplicity also
enables you to launch applications by associating them with items such as
events and contact records. And Simplicity's Shooter function, also found
in Ecco Professional, makes it easy to move data to and from the PIM.
Finally, Simplicity shares an identical file format with all versions of
Ecco Professional, for easy communication between versions. Ecco
Simplicity lists for $149.
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Type:      Software Review
           Evaluation
Company:   Arabesque Software Inc.
Product:   Ecco Simplicity (Personal information management system)
Topic:     Personal information management systems
           Evaluation


Record#:   14 766 333
                              *** End ***
*****  Computer Select, January 1994  : Articles *****

Journal:    PC Magazine  Jan 11, 1994 v13 n1 p110(2)
COPYRIGHT Ziff-Davis Publishing Company 1994
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Title:     ECCO Professional.
             (Arabesque Software Inc.) (The Best Products of 1993)(Brief
             Article)
Author:    Seymour, Jim


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Full Text:

Picking the right PIM (personal information manager) isn't easy. Aside
from the usual requirements of ease of use, stability, and compatibility,
PIMs demand a match between styles: yours and theirs.

Version 1.1 of ECCO Professional ($395) may fill the needs and fit the
styles of more PC users than any other we've yet seen. At its heart, ECCO
is a sophisticated outliner. Literally everything in an ECCO file is part
of a master outline that you can expand for more detail or compress to
headings only. Click on items in that outline or on boxes on ECCO's menu
bar and you jump to two other ways of viewing that information: an
elaborate Rolodex-style contacts file, or an appointments-and-reminders
file, with daily, weekly and monthly views. As you would expect, ECCO
lets you link data among these files so that you can click your way
through the displays, chasing down related information. A cute
cursor-like "shooter" allows easy export of ECCO information. If PIMs
have disappointed you in the past, give ECCO Professional a look.

Arabesque Software Inc., 2340 130th Ave. NE, Bellevue, WA 98005;
800-457-4243. Version 1.0 reviewed: September 14, 1993, page 50.
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Type:      Cover Story
Company:   Arabesque Software Inc.
Product:   Ecco Professional (Personal information management system)
Topic:     Personal information management systems
           Top Rating
           Achievements and Awards


Record#:   14 616 748
                              *** End ***
*****  Computer Select, January 1994  : Articles *****

Journal:    PC Magazine  Dec 21, 1993 v12 n22 p54(1)
COPYRIGHT Ziff-Davis Publishing Company 1993
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Title:     ECCO simplicity is easier than pro version.
             (Arabesque Software Inc.'s ECCO Simplicity 1.1 personal
             information management software)  (First Looks) (Brief
             Article)
Author:    Finnie, Scot


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Full Text:

With a name like Simplicity, the new $149 "lite" version of Arabesque
Software's ECCO Professional sounds like PIM perfection. While ECCO 1.0
drew rave reviews last summer as a versatile and robust personal
information manager (First Looks, September 14, 1993), it didn't win much
praise for ease of use. ECCO's outline-based underpinnings provide
powerful cross-referencing and data portability, but the outline metaphor
isn't familiar to most PIM users, and the program provides so many views
that you're unlikely to feel comfortable with it right off.

Arabesque saw these drawbacks early on and responded with ECCO
Professional 1.1 and ECCO Simplicity 1.1. The goal for Simplicity was to
create a more accessible, more manageable PIM for people primarily
interested in address book and personal scheduling tools.

The best of ECCO Simplicity's new usability features are its graphical
weekly and monthly calendar views, which look like a Week-at-a-Glance
date book and a wall calendar, respectively. Drag-and-drop and right
mouse-button pop-ups are implemented extensively in these graphical views
and throughout the program--a marked improvement.

To get new users up and running faster, Simplicity installs a simplified
view that shows new larger toolbar icons with text labels. The toolbar
has only three buttons: Calendar, Phone, and Outlines. There are five
preconfigured outlines that ease the process of adapting to the outline
metaphor.

Simplicity also provides five template views customized to different
professions or tasks: Legal, Manager, Project, Research, and Sales.
Additional tweaks include sorting from any view and new Preferences
options for adjusting time slots in the calendar.

Fewer Features

What Simplicity doesn't have is ECCO Pro's optional Advanced menu
functions, which build user-created folders and columns. They let you
group and view outlines of all types, customize grid columns, and create
named filters for limiting the types of information shown in ECCO views.
You can upgrade to ECCO Pro 1.1 for $199.

Simplicity is much easier to use than the professional version, but it
isn't an all-new, greatly simplified PIM that blows away the competition
for ease of use. Although it has been significantly dressed up, the
powerful outline structure is still apparent in some parts of the
program. But overall, Arabesque was successful in making Simplicity much
less daunting to first-time users.

In addition to achieving its goal of being easier to use, Simplicity is
an excellent value at its $79 introductory price. Meanwhile, the $395
ECCO Professional 1.1 is absolutely first-rate. That's because
Simplicity's many usability enhancements come in the professional
version, too.

List price: ECCO Simplicity, Version 1.1, $149 ($79 through December
1993). Requires: 2MB RAM (4MB recommended), 3MB hard disk space, Windows
3.1. Arabesque Software Inc., 2340 130th Ave. NE, Bellevue, WA 98005;
800-457-4243, 206-885-4272; fax, 206-885-0127.
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Type:      Software Review
           Evaluation
Company:   Arabesque Software Inc.
Product:   Ecco Simplicity (Personal information management system)
Topic:     Personal information management systems
           Evaluation


Record#:   14 761 261
                              *** End ***
*****  Computer Select, January 1994  : Articles *****

Journal:    PC-Computing  Jan 1994 v7 n1 p48(1)
COPYRIGHT Ziff-Davis Publishing Company 1994
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Title:     The ultimate PIM? Ecco does it all.
             (Arabesque Software's Ecco Simplicity 1.1 and Ecco
             Professional 1.1 personal information managers)  (New!)
Author:    Brenesal, Barry


Abstract:  Arabesque Software's $395 Ecco Professional and $149 Ecco
           Simplicity personal information managers (PIMs) are strong and
           unique packages. The packages use outline views in place of
           the typical database to provide better organization. Outlines
           can have innumerable levels to provide users who like outlines
           an intuitive organization method. The interface handles block
           commands well, enabling users to move sections of their
           outlines while maintaining the relationships among the
           elements. The Shooter background program enables users to copy
           information to and from other packages. Ecco Professional also
           has folders to improve organization further. Each outline is
           automatically placed in a folder, and users can drag elements
           into multiple folders. Ecco Professional also enables users to
           add columns to outlines and to specify items such as views and
           folders for shared network use.
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Full Text:

Everybody has his or her own vision of utopia. And everybody has a dream
personal information manager (PIM). Many of the current PIMs take the
contact-manager approach: They're basically special-purpose databases
designed to store names, dates, and addresses. These products--including
Prisma Software's YourWay and Chronos Software's Who-What-When--aren't as
good at managing informal collections of data and unstructured ideas.

Arabesque Software's two PIMs, Ecco Simplicity and

Ecco Professional, are a strong departure from the database-style PIMs on
the market. Both Ecco Simplicity and Ecco Professional have
well-designed, easy-to-use phone book and calendar modules, but they
replace the standard PIM's small, frequently unsearchable memo fields
with flexible outline views. Outlines are inherently superior to
databases as a planning tool because they conform to natural hierarchical
thought processes. With the Ecco products, you can create nearly
unlimited outlines using as many sublevels as you need.

It Works Like You Do

If you think in outlines, the implementation is intuitive. Hiding and
expanding outline levels is as simple as double-clicking on an entry
item. Block commands, used for manipulating nonsequential entries, are
handled particularly well. When you move items, the relationships between
parent items and subitems are always maintained. Included templates help
get you started with project planning and other basic tasks.

For quick-and-dirty links between programs, a small but useful background
program called Shooter enables you to copy information to and from an
Ecco program to any other running program.

Of the two Ecco products, Ecco Simplicity leaves off here. Simplicity's
older sibling, Ecco Professional, incorporates additional tools that
strongly enhance the product's capabilities.

Extreme Organization

Ecco Professional adds folders to the palette of organizational tools. A
folder is automatically created for each outline, and you can drag any
entry into multiple folders so it will show up in multiple outlines.

You can also add columns to any outline. Columns can contain dates, check
marks, plain text, or pick-lists (such as Important and Background).
Column values stay with the associated outline entry, and you can make a
column into an outline "parent" to quickly display all the entries marked
Important.

On a network, you can designate views, columns, folders, and forms for
shared network or private use, but password support is missing. Arabesque
plans to add group scheduling features to a later release.

The Ecco product line is integrated. Forms and columns created with Ecco
Professional are usable in Ecco Simplicity.

No other PIM can provide Ecco's combination of solid, traditional
modules, useful outline views, and OLE support. Competitor Lotus
Organizer has a cleaner, more instantly intuitive display, but it isn't
nearly as flexible. Note-based Info Select for Windows breaks the
database barrier, although it lacks an integrated calendar and phone
book.

Both Ecco Professional and Ecco Simplicity are strong PIMs. If your
information management needs are simple, Ecco Simplicity is a good value
at $149. Ecco Professional, with its amazing powers of organization,
justifies its higher $395 price tag. An upgrade from Simplicity to
Professional is $199. Ecco Professional 1.1 $395 Arabesque Software (206)
869-9600

Ecco Simplicity 1.1 * $149 * Arabesque Software * (206) 869-9600
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Type:      Software Review
           Evaluation
Company:   Arabesque Software Inc.
Product:   Ecco Professional 1.1 (Personal information management system)
           Ecco Simplicity 1.1 (Personal information management system)
Topic:     Personal information management systems
           Evaluation


Record#:   14 612 844
                              *** End ***
