Customer Reviews

PLAN PLUS FOR WINDOWS XP V.5 BY FRANKLIN COVEY

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I'm an IT Director at a midsize organization and I use the FC system for years with my palm. I don't recall the version, but it was simple, did tasks, calendar and contacts.

Got a treo 680 and had to upgrade. Now, I also maintain treo's for several employees as well.

I read the reviews here and couldn't believe the software was this bad. Being a provider of tech support, I know how irrational people can be about technology.

Sadly, they're correct.

I found the user interface confusing, bloated and rather cumbersome to use. As a result, I've been using the software strictly for tasks. Today I tried calendaring and it crashed my treo and after two hours with their tech support, I can no longer synch.

There is simply no excuse for this. In addition, I consider it unethical for FC to create such a product that has effectively made me inefficient.

Stick with the Palm software or outlook until FC comes up with a viable, intuitive product that matches their paper binders.

I upgraded to v.5 from v.3 on my tablet PC. I was fooled by the prettier interface. I wanted to be able to make more use of the other FC planning tools - daily compass, goals, etc. - and the newer interface included them. So, I bit the bullet and upgraded. BIG MISTAKE!

V.3 synced with my Palm perfectly, and printed my daily calendar with the prioritized task list into a hard copy that looked just like the paper FC plans (with a small battery tablet PC, it was hard to always carry the PC around to meetings. I would take notes with the hard copy and transfer those to the daily notes pages at the end of the day). V.5 didn't sync with my Palm properly, so FC tech support told me to use an earlier build of the software - which still doesn't sync properly! They also told me that they had given up (actually words to that effect) on formatting the printouts to look like FC planner pages, but "the newer features more than make up for that". Sorry, they don't. Not to mention, the product has a very bad habit of not even seeing installed printers - going so far as to tell me that my PC has no printers installed. I can't even print to PDF (yes, Acrobat is on this PC) to have the page print on another computer.

I went from a very usable, if minimal, product, to one that isn't usable at all.

Now if I can just find the install file for v.3 again....

Hi,

I have used the Franklin planner software as far back as their Ascend product. I gave up on Plan Plus, as I am still unable to get around the synchronization problems. I have called Franklin tech support numerous times with no answers and no help. It is a real shame when a company of the caliber of Franklin Covey ignores customer complaints and continues to sell this faulty product.

If anyone has found a way to use this product with Window's XO and Palm Life drive, please let me know.

Bob

Unlike other reviewers, I don't have any issues running this software. However, I have a newer computer with a 3 gig processor and 1 gig of ram. I also am not trying to use the software with a palm or tablet.

I love all of the features except for one. My BIGGEST GRIPE is the repeat tasks. Most of the things I do are repeat tasks. My workouts, my book writing, etc are all scheduled to show up on certain days. If I don't click "completed" for a certain task, that repeat task will never show up again. There is no "not completed" option to click. Not only that, if you schedule repeat tasks and then look at the weekly view to see all of the tasks for the week, it will only (for example) show you all of your repeat tasks for monday, but there will be nothing showing tuesday through friday. It is frustrating to click something completed if it wasn't just to have it show up again the next day. I also would have liked the feature of what percentage of tasks were completed so I might improve week to week, but that is unavailable as well.

I have emailed customer support many times but have never seen any changes. And I have not gotten back a response on why the change I requested won't be implemented. I also have tried to get updates for my software many times, but they rarely if ever make updates to this software. It appears no one cares much about this product at franklincovey which is really disappointing since I like everything else about the software.

The good thing about the software is it makes it easy to take your major goals and break them down into small workable goals and schedule them out. That part of it works great for me, and it is easier to visualize how it can happen. But all it takes is for one frustrating feature to get in the way, and the software becomes irritating.

Maybe the next version will be an improvement.

I have been a fan of Franklin Covey planners & software for years, dating back to my Handspring Visor so long ago. You can imagine my disappointment when I purchased this software to use with my brand new Palm Z22 and cannot get it to work. So far, I have installed and uninstalled various conduits, rebooted my PC countless times, hard reset my Palm (losing all of my stored information in the process - most inconvenient) and still nothing. Apparently the issue is with 'Agilix GoBinder' which is the little engine that supposedly makes the sync happen. I have also attempted to contact Agilix customer support who were very helpful, but unable to solve the problem. FC support is useless.

It is very frustrating to pay so much $$ for what one would think is software from a reliable name, only to have so many complications.

To say the least, I am dissapointed in a company which I thought would have more care to put out products that would be of use to their loyal customers. Since 'open' software cannot be returned for a refund I guess I will have to use the CD as a coaster and begin shopping for a suitable alternative!

I have had such a problem with this software. I am a hardened FP user since 1991 when I started with the paper based system. It's an awesome technique and concept. Unfortunately, their software implementation has never been a good one (I've used previous generations of their software before moving to the XP version). I NEVER write product reviews for anything. But the problems with this product have plagued me for sooo long that I feel compelled to write and hopefully help someone else not get into this mess.
My experience has been good with tech support. They have supported the problems I've had. Unfortunately the product is not stable. I still get crashes where it disappears altogether (although it does come back...). I still have problems with hotsync. I had it working with tech support's great help, but ANYTIME you change a single thing the whole thing falls apart. I had to upgrade laptops at work (how I use it....), and on the new laptop I've yet to get it sync'ing.
I'm desperate for an alternate product from them - hopefully they will dump this and bring something else online.
Hope this helps someone out there....

I've been using PlanPlus 4.11 for about 6-8 months on my Tablet PC running XP Tablet PC SP2. I had some complaints about 4.11 -- it eats CPU, it crashes, I miss some functionality I had with paper (like the ability to write in the margins) -- but 5 lasted about 2 hours before I was uninstalling it and reinstalling 4.11. Why? Well, this one seems to be even slower than 4.11. I can no longer check things off quickly with a pen -- they've created cute little symbols so it now takes longer to check them off. I'm used to thinking with either a pen or keyboard, but this gives me the worst of both -- I can't take advantage of the tablet functionality when I'm locked into selecting a symbol. 4.11 could figure out which symbol I wanted from my handwritten version and substitute it -- 5.0 requires that I select one from the list. SLOW! I also reset my stationary three times -- and I am not a new user of either FC software or software in general -- and it would not keep my preferences. This is the first upgrade I had of any product that was so much worse I went back to the old one. To be honest, if I hadn't already paid for the 4.11 version, I'd probably use GoBinder Lite -- it's free and came with the Tablet. GoBinder from Agilix is the underlying software that supports PlanPlus, so it isn't much different. GoBinder Lite is geared to students, but you can customize most of it to regain PlanPlus functionality. This software is not worth the price -- at any price! I gave it one star only because I could not give it 0.

A warning to anyone considering purchasing any products from Franklin Covey. Franklin will be discontinuing products used on Outlook. The products are failing at an unprecented level. You will not receive support for products you purchase and will be directed to purchase the online subscription.

A complaint has been filed with the BBB for false advertising. Additional, a class action lawsuit is being prepared as well. DO NOT BUY FROM THIS COMPANY

I have been a loyal user of Plan Plus for windows for the past 3+ years. On windows XP it was a great stand along ap and despite some sync issues over the years, was able to use it successfully with my Palm Treo. Unfortunately Franklin Covey no longer cares about making their software work. If you are buying Plan Plus 5 to run on a windows XP machine, you will be fine. If you plan to try to install on a windows 7 machine and sync with Outlook - run for the hills. I have been back and forth with their tech support for over six months trying to get Plan Plus for windows or Plan Plus for Outlook 7 to function properly on a windows 7 machine but with no luck. Today was the final straw, and although I am a loyal user of the Covey approach to planning, I am starting my search for an alternative.

I can only assume the positive reviews here are planted by FC employees. I am still using V 5.1 for vista only because I have 5 years of notes in the system. I really like the company and the concept and even gave some time to give them feedback to improve the product. I got a small gift card for my efforts and foolishly used it to buy the new version. I assumed all that effort would have gone into a better product but this "upgrade" is indistinguishable from planned suicide. As a few reviewers have mentioned they have taken out basic functions that made the older version pleasant to use (menu icons, pen shortcuts). It's much slower than V4 and (the only reason I took the upgrade) it is actually less stable than the older version. It crashes regularly to the point that I routinely advance and step back a page to ensure it's saving my work regularly else I lose everything. Most frustrating, they seem to have tried to get into the presumably more lucrative online/subscription market and have abandoned the tablet version as far as I can tell. The one thing you want in a piece of paper is longevity so that's scary. I credit FC with good design skills so it's mind boggling that they haven't taken all the feedback to heart and tried to build a more reliable product. Still hoping for something better in the next version.