Original review published on Steve Litchfield's 3-Lib.

One of the most comprehensive Psion programs ever written, Andy Clarkson's Plan project planning system has received much acclaim since its release. Upon installation it's very easy to see why. Andy wisely supplies an example project, all set up and ready to go, which demonstrates the power of the main program. I've been looking at v4.2 for the 3a/3c and v5.0 for the Series 5, both grabbed from his web site.

Plan is one of the programs that's most benefited from the conversion to the Series 5's larger screen, and the various charts and displays are that much more readable. Control-Q (or the diamond key on the 3a/3c) cycles through the main views. Gantt, Pert, Task, Resources, Holidays, all are displayed in turn, and all quite prettily. A magnifying glass still wouldn't go amiss occasionally, though...

If you've used other project planning packages you'll immediately feel at home with Plan, the setting up of tasks, resources and completions is intuitive and well-polished. The program has been described as 'Microsoft Project for the Psion' and I guess this is the biggest compliment that could be paid.

Despite doing the job well enough, the Series 5 version is still in its infancy and I'd expect more from Andy once he's gotten some feedback. I managed to get some help file 'In use' errors and touch-screen support was almost non-existent, it would have been soooo nice to be able to drag and drop tasks and to set set task durations with the pen.

Plan is very strong on exporting your project data, whether to an agenda or to a Microsoft Project-compatible .MPX file. I couldn't test the latter, but I really liked the agenda export on the 3a/3c version, where it's possible to turn your project almost entirely into a Psion 3 agenda file, complete with dated to-dos, year planner entries, completed items and so forth. Very impressive. No doubt a Series 5 equivalent won't be far behind.

There's far too much here to describe in detail, you really have to play with this program to appreciate it. Unregistered copies are limited to 10 tasks, but this is quite reasonable for evaluation, I suspect most people will decide they do or don't need Plan well before hitting the limit. I could go on: the copious help screens, the detailed manual, the memo facilities etc, but this would start sounding too much like an advert!

A well constructed program and an excellent example of how good shareware can be.

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