14 DAY TRIAL // Because of the impressive quantity of information we have to deal with every day, it seems rather difficult to organize our activities without the help of a computer program. A Personal Data Manager has become a true necessity as a program that will help us manage our books, documents and music, but also our contacts and appointments can come in handy.
Gallieni Productions International has come up with a software application that does all that and more. Avignon Concept 2007 is a freeware program that enables you to organize your schedule, to plan your activities and to manage your collection of books or music. Using it, you won't forget a friend's birthday, an important appointment or to whom you lent your favorite book.
Avignon Concept is available in 5 languages: English, French (Fran?ais), Dutch (Netherlands), German (Deutsch) and Hungarian (Magyar), allowing you to change the language in real-time.
The looks
The graphic interface of Avignon Concept has nothing special and particularly interesting: it is an usual database application display, with a very classic, simple and eye-comforting color scheme.
The main screen is divided into 4 panes, the first one being the menu bar that displays icons for the application's functions. The rest of the window is vertically split into three panels. The left-most panel contains the main categories of activities and the system options; the next presents the options available for the selected activity (Layout, Filter, Details and Task) and finally, the biggest panel is a table view of the records stored in the database of Avignon Concept.
The visual aspect of the menu buttons is a part that the producers should have been more interested in. Although the buttons are suggestive for the functions they represent, the design is very simplistic and not sufficiently elaborated.
The works
The main activity categories that you have to choose from are: Books, Music, Contacts, Documents, To do, Finance, Calendar and Internet. The details that you can specify and the tasks available are specific to the current activity (for books, you have the options to search, run reports or print labels, while for contacts, the other options are: send e-mail, visit website and anniversary).
Avignon Concept allows you to specify all kinds of information for the items you want to store in the database. For example, the details for adding a book to the program are: title, author, publisher, format, language, publishing year, pages, lending information and more. It also gives you the possibility to import data from a text file.
Another interesting feature is the label printing for books and music items. The labels contain the reference number, the registering date, the title and author and are exported to a PDF document (24 labels per page). This way, you will have all your books and your music collection in a perfect order and you'll always know where to find a specific album or book.
Avignon Concept provides you with more than 40 different reports, taking into consideration your sorting preferences and the filters that you have set. The output of the reports can be presented on screen or in a PDF file stored on your computer.
The feature of Avignon Concept concerning the contacts is very well developed, memorizing a wide range of information (name, address, birthdates, telephone numbers, e-mail, web page), not only regarding the person, but also his/her family. Avignon Concept gives you the opportunity to send an e-mail to any of your contacts, or to visit the person's web page.
Another thing I liked about this program is the reminder function that will announce you about the upcoming events of the day (birthdays, things to do, etc) at the start up of Avignon Concept. So, all you have to do to keep a personal digital agenda is to start this program every day and to complete the requested pieces of information.
The modal confirmation windows for every given command are somewhat annoying, but they are useful for the beginners to make sure that they don't press another key by mistake.
The good
The best thing about Avignon Concept is the wide range of information you can store in an organized manner and the fact that each category of data entered has its specific attributes and you don't have to think: "What other information about this person (book/album) would be useful to me in the future?". The producers seem to have thought about every little detail that may prove to be necessary.
The bad
The presence of modal confirmation windows for every accomplished task can be a waste of time for the experienced user.
The truth
Avignon Concept 2007 is a very good personal data manager and, due to its ease of use, I would recommend it to all types of users.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
