Review: Contact Keeper 4.1.2

by Frank Petrie phranky@mamugs.com

Since the release of Apple's Address Book, there have been feature suggestions flying into Apple from all directions. For me, the single most desired feature that is missing would be the ability to print an envelope or address label from within the .app.

The folks at Koingo Software have released a carbonized version of their personal information manager (PIM), Contact Keeper. Since there are several PIMs out there, I thought that a side-by-side comparison, in this case with Apple's Address Book, would best help illustrate my points.

Both .apps have pretty much the same fields; name, emails, phones, URLs, birthdays, etc., which can be customized to a degree. To enter personal information into Contact Keeper's database, you have three tabs to choose from - 'General,' 'Work,' and 'Other.' Address Book has the one pane in which you enter all of your information and notes.

Address Book's tight integration from within the OS gives it a slight advantage on Contact Keeper as far as ease of use. If I click on an email address in Address Book, it launches the Mail .app (or application of my choosing) and addresses the new message for me. In Contact Keeper, you have to hold down the control key and click in the email field to generate an addressed message (Simple enough, but unfortunately, I only found this out after speaking with Koingo. I could find no such instruction in the Help File).

Contact Keeper's equivalent of Address Book's groups are "databases". You can have more than one 'group' opened at any time, but to find it you have to navigate your way to the database you wish to view. In Address Book, you can only open one group at a time, but any group is only one click away. Plus all of your groups are listed in your third pane.

Contact Keeper does, however, have several features that Apple's Address Book doesn't. First, you can print out your addresses in several different ways from individual contacts to lists. Secondly, Contact Keeper will soon print addresses to Avery labels. Koingo is currently working on implementing this feature for an update in the near future. Third, it has a date reminder function so you don't miss your Uncle Fester's birthday.

In the end, the primary difference between these two packages is primarily their look. Address Book is brushed aluminium and Contact Keeper is Aquafied. Other than that, it's pretty much up to you if Contact Keeper suits you better than Address Book or your current PIM software. Only you can make the choice which is more pleasing to look at and which dovetails better into your workflow.

A review from Frank Petrie
Technologies and Products Specialist for User Groups
Mid-Atlantic Macintosh User Groups Team
(MaMUGs)
V.P., Vendor Rep, Webmaster, Cog
SJAUG, South Jersey Apple Users Group
http://www.sjaug.org