Written by brian_houghton on Saturday, February 13, 2010

QOTD: What is the BEST Program You Have Ever Used, on ANY Platform?


Question Of The Day:  What is the best program you have ever used, on any platform?

Simple, I don’t even have to think about this one.  Merlin, made by Neuon, which ran on the EPOC 32 operating system.  For those of you that don’t know what EPOC is, it is simply the best, most robust operating system for mobiles of all time and also the precursor to the current Symbian operating systems.  It was developed and used by Psion.  By robust, I mean truly threaded multi-tasking (this doesn’t exist in mobile OS’ today… you can’t open more than one instance of a program on Windows Mobile, etc).  By robust, I mean only ONE soft reset of the my device in over one calendar year, and this was necessitated by installing an incompatible third party program.

Merlin, by Neuon, for the EPOC 32 OS

Merlin, customizable, collapsible task manager extraordinaire truly highlighted the multi-tasking capabilities of the operating system by providing user defined toolbars for any program of your choosing.  Users could have a system toolbar that provided shortcuts to applications, folders and documents.  The battery and free memory could be monitored easily.  Another toolbar could be defined and become visible when entering a specific program.  For example, the controls and options might become more text editing centered, with specific scripts and caps lock indicators included when launching the word processing application.

Truly customizable.  Truly diverse.  Nothing like it available on any current platform, that I’ve seen.  If there is, LET ME KNOW!  I’m getting all nostalgic just seeing screenshots on the web…

So, what is the best program you have ever used, and why?  Hit the comments below to share your program with us!

By the way, I included the following links in case anyone wants a brief history lesson on EPOC and Psion:

EPOC:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPOC_(computing)
PSION:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion

More in Featured, JAMM, Phones and Mobile Devices, Symbian/Nokia, Views | 2 Comments


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Christopher Spera
Feb 13, 2010

For me, it was Paradox for Windows. I used to code in it, and had a small business on the side where I developed programs in it and sold them. I made some pretty great stuff back in 1994-1996. I even had a day job for a while as an account manager for a firm that speacialized in Paradox for Windows Programming.

Pretty cool; but I am so NOT a coder…

Chris


dgduris
Feb 15, 2010

Funny you would use a Psion screenshot.

Far and away – very far and very away – the best application I have ever used was on a Psion and it was called Mentor.

Mentor managed the tasks you had to accomplish by looking at their assigned priority and duration to complete, their context (work, home, life…) and the appointments and free time in your calendar.

Mentor would then slot into your calendar what you should work on during any given free time. It was totally dynamic – changing up what to do as the situation of your day changed and priorities shifted. I mean, you could walk out of a meeting with new tasks and priorities, plug them in to Mentor and be told what to work on next. And it synced to Outlook.

Hands down the most fantastic app I have used on any platform at any time. Unfortunately, I have not found anything with the same level of capabilities for Win, WinMob or Mac.

I just have to add: “God! I miss my Psion!”

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