Adriel Blog

Blackberry Todo app (todo matrix review)

ToDo application was never a priority of any manager releasing software for any PDAs. It’s not cool or market attractive. People who buy it are usually smart and never waste their money. Blackberry was not an exception. Their todo application simply sucks.

I was looking for a good todo application for the last 2 months trying different apps on the market and convincing myself that embedded todo app is good enough for me.

The truth is the more I was trying to convince myself, the more I hated it. The application is very simplistic and is suitable for a very simple user who has a flat and small hierarchy of tasks. I found their filters not thought through and confusing. Sorting tasks by categories is a pain – you need to press million keys to do so. I feel sorry for a user that needs to go through more than a task. Don’t get me wrong: it is usable and much better than most of the stuff out their. However, it will never be more than a simple grocery checklist.

Then I noticed a todo matrix in one of the reviews. Some people were really excited about it and others claimed that it is too expensive and not worth a penny. I went to their website and found a promotion movie. I can’t say I was impressed but I got a feel that the soft has what I was looking for: a reliable storage for my tracking my crazy ideas.

I used their OTA site to download and install application with a trial license. It took a second to register and create an account to synchronize my task database with their secure online storage and I was ready to go.

Quite honest as I got to the first screen I didn’t know what to do, what could I do and how. Menus had a lot of options I couldn’t understand who needs them. For some reason I decided not to give up and quickly scanned through their user guide.

As I was reading through it I got excited. The guide mentioned a well known book about personal management by David Allen – “Getting things done” or simply GTD. Moreover, the guide also pointed out some weak points of the GTD approach and brought extra metrics from Franklin Covey approach. Both created a very nice combination that would allow tracing immediate progress and also helping to with the long-term strategic objectives.

The todo matrix provided a very simplistic tools from functionality complexity. Nevertheless, the tools gave me a lot of power when adding, looking up or reviewing the task. All the menus that seemed to be awkward initially, suddenly became very clear, easy and effective to use. Within days I started to add more tasks, updating them with more details and incredibly fast querying for them when needed. In short, I was impressed.

I don’t want to idealize the soft. It was a little buggy. Once my blackberry hanged and crashed because of it and I keep getting those annoying ads sometimes during startup. Nevertheless, it does it job efficiently managing lots of my stupid ideas.

After a week of using it I decided to purchase it with a sister product IdeaMatrix for $99 – a lot. Nevertheless, it’s been a month and really happy about it.

I wish I had a synchronization with built-in blackberry PIM databases similar to other products. It is also provided and is called REXConnect. However, it needs extra financing which is a little disappointing after spending so much already.

In any case, I’m happy with what I have for now. If you appreciate advanced self productivity tools, this might be a good one for you. Give a test drive.

I hope this was helpful. I would be happy to respond if you have any further questions.