So, I'm taking one of my daily afternoon strolls and I'm thirsty for a soda. But, I'm all out of cash, so I head over to the bank to use the ATM since it's on the way. Less than thirty seconds after I have my cash I've taken my MessagePad out of my fanny pack, started it up, entered the transaction in PocketMoney, turned off the MessagePad and placed it back in back my fanny bag. Boy, you just gotta love that instant-on feature!
Ok, now what? A week or so later my bank statement comes. With all my transactions listed in PocketMoney, reconciling my account is a piece of cake. Honestly, the first time I balanced my checkbook in years was the month after I started using PocketMoney. Now I do it every month because it's so easy. And in the interim I know exactly how much money is in my checking account because I've learned that PocketMoney is dead-on reliable and accurate.
Now I'm no financial genius, and prefer to not even think about where my money goes. But, dang it all, I need to find out where it's all going (probably to buying more cool software for my Newton!). A while ago I purchased Quicken for my Macintosh but I rarely used it because where I pay the bills (the dining room table) is not where the computer is located (downstairs, on my wife's desk). Quicken has lots of nice features, but portability isn't one of them since it requires a traditional computer (either desktop or laptop). That's where PocketMoney wins.
When I pay bills I can enter them into the Newton right there, as I write each check. Often an entry requires me to write about four characters and tapping a button; that's because PocketMoney will look up the last time I wrote a check to the same business and fill in the amount, category and payee. Plus it knows what the number of the last check was and can fill in the next check number automatically. And, of course, it also sets the date correctly since I'm creating the transaction on the same day I write the check. It's not rocket science, it's just good design.
Once done with all the bill paying, I head down to the Mac and export the data to Quicken. Since Quicken now has all the details of my individual transactions, I don't need to keep that information on the Newton. So, with just a couple of taps all of the data I just exported is rolled up into a single transaction for the month. The balance on the Newton is still correct, but now there are fewer transactions taking up less space and requiring less time to recompute. This export and rollup process takes me all of a couple of minutes. I do the export-and-rollup on a monthly basis, so if I ever want the detailed information back in the Newton I can just delete the rolled-up transaction and import data for that month from Quicken. What could be simpler?
Now, just to prove I'm completely unbiased and fair :-), I'll throw in one gripe. The manual for PocketMoney is pretty good as software manuals go, but the version I have, which I *think* is the latest version, is labelled "Version 2.0b6, March 2 1995". Boy, that's a long beta for the manual. But that's a tiny nit. For the record, PocketMoney has never crashed or lost any data. Ok, it acted weird once and I thought the data was lost, but it turns out somehow the PocketMoney executable (package, in NewtSpeak) was corrupted. Reinstalling solved the problem. All the data was still there (*whew*). This was the first and only time I've ever had a problem with my Newton, and it certainly wasn't the fault of PocketMoney. Probably some other package I was experimenting with.
Catamount Software. Maker of one of the best pieces of Newton shareware on the planet. Not only that, but Catamount is just plain cool. That (non)data loss (non)problem I had? Hardy Macia (Catamount's Proprieter) gave very good technical support when I needed it. Turns out I didn't need it since the problem was mine, not his, but it was nice to know he was there to lend a hand.
Other coolness: they run contests every so often on their web page. Right now, the 175,000th visitor to the web page gets a free copy of one of their other software packages. The lucky 100,000th visitor got a $500 Catamount shopping spree. Who knows what the 200,000'th person will get?
Drop by the Catamount web page at http://www.catamount.com/ and tell 'em I sent you.
Hats off to Catamount Software!