To the well-organized, this simple idea might sound sacrilegious, but for the rest of us, it works great. Create a few folders, add some documents with names like "Work" and "People" (the fewer the folders and documents, the better, Evans maintains), and add informational flotsam and jetsam over time. Use the Search tool to find it again.

The more you add to InfoMagic, the more indispensable it becomes. InfoMagic also stores your data in plain text files, instead of a proprietary file format like some other PIMs, which means you can get information out as easily as it goes in.

A $29 shareware version, InfoMagic Extra, adds task-management features, support for graphics and rich-text editing, a password generator, and more.

--Leigh Anne Jones