Shadow- Projects

[sagehealth]

After the Rave reviews about Shadow, I purchased it. I wish that I would have tried it out first.

I do not want to sound negative, but after playing around with the shadow application (2 hours) it dawned on me that MS word does just as good of job or better of organizing a list of items in a project (plus it spell checks) . I think I just wasted my money, unless someone can enlighten me.... I see no integration with the Palm Desktop to-do list...

I mainly use my desktop for my working space, and the palm as just a reference. I was taken back how (what is the word I am looking for here) basic Shadow Desktop was.

MS Project may be complicated and overpriced, but it does have some power behind it. Shadow seems to me nothing more than a rudimentary outliner....unless I am missing something here. Again I think that MS Word has more power and ease of use when it comes breaking down a project

Jason W kept telling me that nothing out there is going to fit the bill, but I still hoping....

I have not yet recieved the software ( I am still trialing the demo) and have asked jeff if he will cancel my order and refund my money... but I am not sure what will come about.

 

[Anonymous]

Shadow pros

Here's how I use Shadow...and believe me, I don't even *tap* the surface of its capability. I haven't yet used tags, or replaced the to-do app on the Palm. And a disclaimer: I just came back to Shadow after several months of "plain vanilla" use.

First, you're right. Word can be a fine outliner, and the Shadow desktop is pretty basic. Where Shadow helps me is that I outline my major projects (and I have a bunch) in Shadow, decomposing them down to the actionable level, and then I link next actions to the to-do list. I might've misread, and if so, I apologize; did I read that you can't see the integration w/ the to-do list? Check the Shadow instructions on linking. It's a breeze to link an action from the Shadow project plan to either the to-do list or the datebook. Using Word or another outline requires more awkward cutting and pasting of tasks from a project plan into the appropriate action list. Maybe it's a personal taste issue as to which is more complex. Also, in my world, it's very useful to see what's already been done, and Shadow's helpful there (marks actions complete as you check them off in the to-do app.

Again, I'm not the great Shadow jockey at all. Others can rave about the depths of its capability (and it's got a lot of capability). For me, it's just a great portable project planning software for midrange projects.

FWIW, and HTH.

 

[Anonymous]

shadow

the real power is on the palm, not on the desktop,
you can't link items from the desktop to the todo list

this occurs only the palm -- that's one shortcoming,

but its a wonderful program to track projects gtd or otherwise, and their subtasks and put those in a todo list on the palm.

the desktop is fairly primitive than palm app, so only it use it sporadically.

the one outliner that i used that does link items to todo list from desktop is bonsai by natara, but it wasn't as powerful as shadow so i moved back to shadow after a while.

so don't just shadow by desktop app -- its the palm side where the goodies are.

 

[sagehealth]

Shadow rethinking

After working with Jeff M (shadow developer) I am really rethinking shadow- I think it can really work for me. Especially down the road with new developement.

 

[Anonymous]

I own both Shadow and Bonsai. Bonsai has a excellent desktop, and I use it for maintaining lots of information and clippings about personal, non-work interests, and for writing a journal. When I started GTD I wanted to keep my lists in a program with a short list of files, so I could move from one to another easily. I discovered (by reading a post on this site) the clip manager in Shadow. Now I move or copy things from project lists to next action list, from next action to waiting or agendas, etc. I tested linking to the to-do list but the only reason I would have to do that is so the to-dos appeared in Datebk5. The Shadow developer wrote a program (available free on his web site) that makes a list not just launchable (Launcher X does that) but assignable to a hard button. I assigned my next actions list to the to do button.

I agree about the desktop. I used it to get started, and now I use it to set up projects, which have a lot of entries.