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Looking for a Decent Contacts Manager

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J-Mac:
Thanks again folks. A few comments:

@superboyac:  Actually both seem to offer decent printing features. My main reason for wanting this is that my much better half is just starting to get comfortable with computers (despite my prodding for years now!) but she still will not jump on the box to get someone's phone number, address, etc. She prefers a good old-fashioned phone book with the numbers scribbled in it. But as our contacts list grows such books become outdated fast and trying to print add'l pages for them can be hell. I want to be able to print out a "phone book", whether it is a group of pages that can be punched and placed into a physical book or even just a nice, well organized listing. I really don’t like apps that just print one "card" per page. When you get to 300 or even 500 contacts that is a really big, heavy list/book! Both Start-Trak and Handy appear to have the ability to do what I want. I'll do a trial with both and see for sure.

@steeladept:   

1) I need my contacts when I am away from home.  At home, I can just look them up in the family phonebook (which, yes, I did port to Outlook for ease of maintenance, safekeeping, etc., etc.).  If it doesn't synch with the most popular phones and devices, it really misses the mark for me.
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If the app I settle on has decent reports I can post one online and get access from any computer if needed.

2) I want something that has a huge list of fields available, but allows me to customize it to just use the fields I want/need.  Moreover, ideally I want these mapped to match those in my mobile device (probably easier and more lucrative to provide a mobile version of the app to sync to).
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This used to be a prime consideration for me at one time but I no longer use smartphones. (Which is amazing since I once wrote programs for Palm, PPC, and then Symbian Series 60!). Now I just use the best regular cell phone I can get and leave my computing to computers.  8)

2a) If a separate app is deemed the correct route to go, make sure it integrates fully and can dial/message/whatever just like the native app can so you can ignore it completely (delete it if possible).
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This is what I want - a separate contacts app; no PIM necessary. I would only go with one of the Outlook-clones if the contacts module was that much better than any of the stand-alones I find.

These have always proved to be way to much for any PIM I have found in the past other than Outlook.  Even then, Outlook doesn't satisfy all these requirements (specifically the ability to remove unwanted fields), but at least it doesn't miss any information.
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I never liked Outlook much for email; it always managed to be limited in areas I wanted the most. IMAP for example, was always difficult to use freely in Outlook. (I am referring to versions up to and including Office 2003's Outlook build). Contacts were always Outlook's strongest point IMO however as my PST grew in size I would experience more and more corruption sneaking in. And it felt like when I really needed to get some important piece of information that was exactly when Outlook wouldn’t open and needed to be "fixed". Drove me even crazier than I already am!)

@Mark:  Aha - so you are still on the fence? Or pretty much decided on Start-Trak? BTW, one thing I did notice is that the Personal edition is more limited than I originally realized: No custom fields, no add'l email addresses, etc. It appears that if you want most of the little extras like that you have to get the Business edition at almost 2X the price. That might just place my bet on Handy Address Book. Am I reading all that correctly?

Thanks!

Jim

superboyac:
Ah!  Jim, I understand what you are looking for.  I'll see if Handy can do that tonight, I don't see why not...and easily at that.

I once looked into the online capabilities of Handy and also A-book.  But this was before I had a website and before cloud computing became so big.  Now, I can just put a report on my website and find all my contacts from there.  i don't need to be adding and editing contacts when I'm on the run anyway.

Also, as for dialing, I'm your expert there.  I looked heavily into that.  Handy won that battle, hands-down.  I'll tell you why.  For dialing, I wanted it to be as quick and easy as possible.  All the applications I tried had too much clicking and windows popping that I had to later close, it was all very cumbersome and annoying.  What was great about Handy is that you dial, and the little window will pop up while dials.  but then you can set it to automatically close after a few seconds, which is GREAT.  That means, you just click once to dial, and that's it.  No extra windows left over afterwards, and no multiple clicking while dialing.  it was the only one that did this.

mwfuss:
Jim,

Quite right on the fence sitting business! I do plan to purchase StatTrak, though and when I do, I will use it primarily to keep up with addresses and other information on church members as well as family members.

You are right on the personal versus business editions. When I do buy, it will be the business edition for the custom fields. Let me say that the one feature that really sold me on StatTrak is the ability to add individuals to a family along with personal information such as birthdays for that individual. If I remember correctly, this was one of the few relatively inexpensive programs that would allow me to do that.

Mark

steeladept:
I never liked Outlook much for email; it always managed to be limited in areas I wanted the most. IMAP for example, was always difficult to use freely in Outlook. (I am referring to versions up to and including Office 2003's Outlook build). Contacts were always Outlook's strongest point IMO however as my PST grew in size I would experience more and more corruption sneaking in. And it felt like when I really needed to get some important piece of information that was exactly when Outlook wouldn’t open and needed to be "fixed". Drove me even crazier than I already am!)
-J-Mac (June 16, 2010, 11:51 AM)
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Alas, here I must agree whole-heartedly.  I do use Outlook as a PIM and just forgo the email components (very heavy PIM, but effective).  I don't bother even setting up email accounts, so these issues don't affect me anymore.  I use Outlook for contact and calendar management because it offers all the functionality I want (and a lot more that I don't!), sync's with just about everything, and has not previously been bested by anything else.

Do you intend to use this request with calendaring as well?  If not, why not a simple Access contact list application?  I believe Microsoft built one eons ago as a trainer for Access that was basically a quite capable phonebook.  With this database, you could expand your fields as needed and create reports formatted any way you like.  Of course this assumes you know or are willing to learn Access....

joiwind:
J-Mac - there's RGS-CardMaster, the gui is a bit special but it might do what you want but perhaps not everything you want ! I've been using it for a while.
You can print the whole address book as a spreadsheet, or all cards or a selection of cards.
You can search in many ways...

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