Splash Notes is a handy outliner for your Windows Mobile device, offering one of the better solutions for people who like, want and need to create lists on their phone that will also sync to a desktop client. If you like to create hierarchical To-Do lists or categorize your … whatever, Splash Notes will help you achieve.

The application itself installs on your desktop (sorry, didn’t see any Mac support, as far as I can tell, this is Windows only) and comes with a sampling of Outlines to get you started. From there, whatever Outlines you choose to use are then transferred to your phone for you to be able to edit, delete, etc.

But that’s not where the fun is. The fun is creating your own Outlines for whatever you want to make a list to do.

Clicking on New on the desktop brings you up to a blank page with the first item bulleted for you with a handy check box. Of course, if you’d prefer numbers or letters, that’s easy to do in the preferences. I’m not going to go into a lot of details for the desktop part since they essentially work the same on the device. In fact, the first part and most of the brief User Manual is dedicated to using the application on your Smart phone.

Suffice is to say, once you’ve created the general Outline, Splash Notes allows you to create a number of sub items (children) under the name of the Outline.

While we are here talking about this, you can also ad notes/images to any item within an Outline with a corresponding icon appearing.

Once done on the desktop side, connect your Windows Mobile Smartphone and hit “sync” and there it is, all categorized and Outline for you just as you entered on your desktop.

I know, you’re telling me that’s all fine and good but some people don’t want/need desktop Sync. Well, they’ve got you covered there as well. Everything you can do on the desktop side, you can do on the phone side.

On my beloved Motorola Q9h, Splash Notes works like a charm. All the Outlines, categories, notes for the items in the Outline are waiting for me (okay, it takes a few seconds to load, but you know what I mean).

I’ve customized the look of my Outlines with my own colors and what-not. When you click on an Outline you created on your desktop, you’re presented with the same list that you can view by any category. But the good part is being able to edit those on the run.

Now, Splash Notes gets a little tricky here, taking a few more clicks than I would like to see to add an item to your Outline. Not hard, but a little bit more than I thought it would take since it is not as “intuitive” (unless you’ve read the included manual) to add a new item to an already created Outline.

To save you some hunting around, here’s what I’ve found then you can decide for yourself how big a deal it will be for you.

You open an Outline. Scroll down to the first item, then hit Menu, then hit Item (why not Edit?), it’s then you see how to add a new item to the already selected Outline. Hmmm, okay.

But from Item (again, why not Edit?) you can Move it up, down, left, right, add a note, attach a drawing, basically do anything you want. When done, hit Save and you can move on. At your next Sync, Splash Notes will make sure the phone and desktop Outlines are speaking the same language for your very busy life.

The tricky part for me is I think this is a great program for people who like to keep these kinds of lists or Outlines and want an all-in-one solution that doesn’t involve any other application. There are some people who just won’t do Outlook and Microsoft still hasn’t seen fit to allow Tasks to do basic Outlining functions like Splash Notes or other applications.

The program on the phone and desktop works quickly and easily. Once you get past not trying to use Edit to, uh, edit your Outline, you’ll be fine.

However, it’s not the cheapest Outliner for Windows Mobile, even including a desktop app. And I think, it really is best for people who need and want an Outline program that works as advertised and does a few more things like being able to add Notes and Drawings.

I’d say it is a definite buy if you fit that category, but do try and catch it on sale.

SplashData

 

 

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