Review: SmartToDoList

Posted on August 6, 2008 by LJ Earnest
Categories: Review,Software

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Disclosure: I was asked to review this software by the developers, but I receive no affiliate fees from customers. I was given a key for the software in order to review it.

Summary

SmartToDoList, by Scott Karstetter, is a light-weight and easy-to-use to-do list application

Details

Manufacturer: SmartToDoList.com
Platform: Windows
Current Version: 1.1.5
Price: $14.95 USD

Overview

The installation for the application was extremely quick and trouble-free. Following clear directions on the website, I was able to put the application right onto my thumb drive. The uninstall of the program from the hard drive was painless and didn’t leave anything behind.

The interface is clean, intuitive and uncluttered. Creating a project is simply clicking on the New Project in the project list, or choosing the option from the menu. From there it is very easy to enter tasks, tagging each as you go. You can separate tags with commas, thereby putting a task on two tagged lists. Priorities are set either by typing in a command, or by clicking on the box to the left of the task.

Editing tasks is done very easily by either double-clicking on the task, or clicking the icon. It can also be done using keyboard shortcuts that seem to be very memorable.

This application does not support sub-projects, and I found that filters, tags and to-do list items only reflect the currently selected project. Right-clicking in the to-do list area brought up a menu, but items in that menu were applied with surprising results.

I also could not find a way to mark a task as “complete” in order to test the Completed Item filter. After perusing the help file, I found that deleting and completing are the same thing in this application, and that the only difference is that “completed” are those items which were deleted since the last time you started the program.

The data is stored in plain ol’ XML, making it very easy to extract the data into other applications.

Conclusion

This is a good start to an application, but it is very basic. Not being able to span projects to combine to-do lists and not having a true “completed” task that can be searched later limit its usefulness.

But for a straight-forward to-do list application, it is great. The simplicity of the user interface, the keyboard commands, and the data format are all big bonuses.

Feature In A Nutshell

Current Features

• Typed commands allow you to quickly manipulate information without using the mouse.
• Filters show the tags you have set, and also priorities
• The interface is simple and elegant
• Easy to install and uninstall
• Able to run well and quickly from a thumb drive
• Data stored in XML rather than a proprietary format

Suggested Improvements

• Allow for sub-projects
• Allow for filtering across projects — to get a complete to-do list
• Implement a true complete function, with the ability to show and hide tasks

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