Customer Reviews

Vivonic Fitness Planner for Palm

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I loaded Vivonic on my PDA just after the holidays--and after one more round of promises to myself to manage my nutrition and fitness more carefully. It's been an incredible help!! Instead of carrying around a notebook to keep a food diary, and then looking up the nutritional info--or worse, typing it into my desktop, I can now make a note of everything I eat and drink AND keep useful, up-to-date records of my workouts!

I really like being able to access a report on my PDA throughout the day that includes the most important information--total calories, fat, etc. (Makes it easy to decide, for instance, where to eat dinner tonight!) Then later, at my desktop, I can get very complete information about most any vitamin or nutrient. Sure, there are a few foods that aren't in the food list, but not many--and I find the program very easy to use, and easy to add my custom foods to.

Vivonic can't force you to stay in shape, but it CAN make it easier to know the truth about what you're doing and eating. A great tool toward personal fitness and wellness.

I had been using Richard Simmons "Food Mover" but it wasn't giving me any insight as to what I was doing wrong. After using the Vivonic for a couple of weeks I could see my problem was in carbohydrates. I also wasn't exercising enough. With the Vivonic and my Palm Vx (I keep it in a wallet holder so I have it with me all the time) I could add foods as I ate them and could see how many calories I had left. The software comes with a wide selection of foods so it is relatively easy to add them into the system. You can also add custom foods and yes, it has fast food listings also.

PROS: Convenient to have with me especially since I already own and use a Palm Pilot. Easy data entry. Large database of foods, including fast foods. Easily can add additional foods yourself. Can create your own exercise programs. Updates are easily downloaded from the Internet. Good reporting on calories consumed and calories burned.

CONS: No snack areas so must enter snack times with meal times. No weight progress chart in the reporting system. (i.e. it doesn't show statisitcs from my measurements, weight, and body fat percentage). I would like to see my goals being obtained.

The software met my expectations in most respects, and actually exceeded them in the amount of detailed nutritional information it provided; some of which has already caused me to modify my eating habits in less than a week. For example, I was surprised to see how much sugar I was getting from the non-fat milk in the many lattes I was drinking.

I would agree with the shortcomings mentioned in the other reviews:

1) it is nearly impossible to add foods or exercises that are not in the rather limited database.

2) I was surprised that the software does not graph things like body weight, body fat, etc., considering it graphs food intake.

3) I'll add that I find some of the calorie consumption totals from exercise wildely optimistic. For example, the software listed 790 calories burned from 30 minutes on the Nordic Trak at aerobic intensity levels. The Nordic Trak and my heart rate monitor both calculated the same level to within 2 calories--475. However, this was easy to correct by just reducing the intensity level in the software to get the correct calorie total.

All in all, though, I view this as a fun and easy to use piece of software which seems a great value.

I received the Vivonic software several weeks ago, and have been using it daily to record my food intake and exercise. The program works great; I have had none of the installation and operation problems that a previous reviewer described. This program is the tool that every dieter and exercise fanatic has dreamed of. Although it takes some time to enter nutritional information for custom foods, the payoff is a cumulative list of custom foods that can always be accessed on future occasions. It would be nice if custom foods could be entered on the handheld as well as the desktop, but this is a minor drawback, and one that Vivonic perhaps will address with a future software patch. So far, I have not gotten in stride with a diet program, but the Vivonic software has provided me with important feedback concerning where my diet needs improvement. This is a software program which I look forward to using every day. I have checked out evaluation versions of other fitness software, including DietLog, and nothing comes close to the quality, functionality, and intuitiveness of Vivonic. Buy it!!

The Vivonic software works well, let me preface this review with that statement. It does what it promises. However, the serious fitness guy/gal is going to want more. I want links to fitness programs (i.e., Asimba's pay services (not just the wimpy free ones that are listed on the Vivonic web site), or eDiet's programs, etc.) In addition to the lack of connectivity the software needs a better list of foods and their caloric, fat, protein, and carb composition. And, it doesn't take snacks into consideration. You have to add snacks to your breakfast, lunch, or dinner numbers in the software to count them. We need a Vivonic Pro version, this one gets useless really fast if you're serious about tracking your food intake and exercise regiment. How about some upgrades? I'm pretty sure the website hasn't been updated since I bought this software 8 months ago. Let's go guys! Let's get that rating up to 5 stars!

I really love this fitness software but I hope the fix all the bugs in it soon. Its strange but in all my years of trying to lose weight and stay in shape, I have never had anything that has motivated my like this little application. Since I purchased the software 6 weeks ago, I'm running 5 days a week and have really improved my eating habits and lost 9 pounds (11 more to go). Its simple and easy to use and its fun and discreet. I can enter my information in my palm wherever I'm at and know exactly where I stand calorie-wise for the day. My only complaints are as follows:

1. There is a bug in the code where it begins to delete information that is more than 2 weeks old. I have emailed their tech support twice and tried all of the suggestions on their web site and its still not fixed. I never received a response to my tech support emails.

2. They could significantly improve their reporting capabilities. I understand this is an early version of the software, but I'm really looking forward to seeing later versions with enhanced reporting and other improvements.

Excellent functionality. Easy to use, easy to work on the desktop and Palm. Great Simple Graphing and Charting.

Inadequate reporting. You cannot print your exercise or nutrition journal/logs --- only view on the screen. You cannot trend diet or exercise information over time...for example if your performance improves, or goes down, or body metrics.

No updates to product in over a year.

Regarding Vivonic's software, I have a very simple request: Allow me to print a week's food journal out on ONE piece of paper. I have to provide my doctor with a list of everything I eat daily for each week for medical reasons. I purchased this program because I had thought this would be an easier method to track my food intake than pen and paper or using journal entries on my visor. However, I have found that my only options for printing are either:

1.) Copy and paste each of the contents of the three meal tabs from each of seven days into another program. or 2.) Do twenty-one print screens.

When I contacted tech support regarding this, I was told they would leave my request in my case notes and it may be reviewed by their engineers. Let's just say I am not holding my breath.

I am sure I am not the only one who would like to have this functionality. Without this feature, I do not feel that this program can justify its high cost.

It is also very frustrating to not be able to add custom foods into the palm interface. If I eat something away from my pc that is not in the database, I have to remember the nutritional info or log it in a different program on my visor until I return home.

Despite poor reviews, I decided to give this product a try. I only still use it because I have not been able to find a similar product that allows the palm to sync info with my pc.

This is a great idea, but a rather poor implementation.

I like the idea, and the basic features are easy to use, but there are too many problems. 1) Hard to do custom foods. 2) You create a "plan" then alter it, it puts the new/moved stuff onto the PDA, but doesn't remove the old plan features. 3) I have had a lot of trouble with stuff not synching properly. I admit, I haven't tried to do very much diagnosis, but the thing is, you don't get any error messages or other information, you just get missing data. And this can happen both directions.

I do like the "meals" feature and "circuits" - it lets you put together common foods or exercises. Other than the synching problems with the plan, the exercise part is pretty good. I don't do a lot of unusual exercises, so I did not have to do customization. But I was able to create a circuit for an exercise video that I do regularly. Its about 10 weight training exercises, so the circuit feature worked great, and I was able to find all of the exercises in the standard database.

If you're willing to spend some time diagnosing problems, this might be a good piece of software. I'm just a little too impatient.

I purchased this product and I have yet to get it to sync properly with my Palm. I am knowledgeable with computers and have had several "gurus" look at it with no help. Whenever I sync with my Palm, all customer meals are deleted. I have emailed tech support - receiving a response 2 weeks later with the exact same software that I installed. Absolutely NO help. They are no longer a part of Intel (sold 2 years ago) and are still marketing under Intel w/no phone number or address listed (all www registration, phone #, and addresses point to Intel). I have contacted Intel and they are going after Vivonic demanding a cease and desist from them to remove Intel from the packaging and registration. The program - if it worked would be great. But frankly having no tech support doesn't make this software worth buying.