We've been using it for so many years now that we have accumulated an extraordinary record of phone numbers, interviews, business transactions, notes and quotations, text retrieved from Web pages etc. All the information that most people write on Post-It notes and table napkins and throw away, Bleeding Edge has stored away on Info Select, ready for instant retrieval.

Several times a day we search the database, looking for a phone number or address, something we read somewhere on a particular topic that has suddenly become vital, details of computer error messages, fixes to various problems etc.

Within the space of one 10-minute period as we were writing this, for instance, we looked it up three times.

The first was when the Plantronics headset we use on our mobile phone suddenly stopped working. We simply typed in “Plantronics” and there were all the details we needed. We rang the distributor, told them the model number, and exactly when we'd bought it - on December 17 last year, well within the warranty period - and the invoice number that allowed them to locate the transaction.

We had to arrange a travel insurance policy, and we needed to know the name of a particularly helpful travel agent we'd used two years ago. All we remembered was her first name, but with Info Select, you don't need much information. We typed in "Helen" and up popped the information.

A courier rang unexpectly to pick up a printer we'd been reviewing, and we wanted to quickly print out the address details. It was in Info Select, already formatted.

Given those typical results, we could scarcely say that the way we use Info Select hampers us unduly. But when we compared our Info Select data to our friend's, ours lacked definition. Frankly, it looked like the information had been entered with a shovel. Basically we had a long list of entries running down the side of the screen, in what the program terms the Selector.

We could search them easily enough, which is why they were simply sitting there in a long list. But in the years since we first began using Info Select it's become much more powerful. We could have been using some of the new features that came out in Info Select 6 and the latest version, Info Select 7 [since updated to Info Select 8] to streamline things as our friend had done.

That is the paradox of the diligent user. When you get to know what appear to be the most useful elements of a piece of software for your particular purposes, you tend to stop learning about it and just go on using it.

We did alter our ways sufficiently to use the Transporter, a lightning rod icon in the Windows tray that allows you to instantly transfer marked text in one application to a new note in Info Select. We think that came out in version 5.

But basically we just used the "N" key to enter new information and the G key to retrieve it. That's why our friend's data had much more form. He had organised a lot of his notes into topics (by pushing the F11 key) and nominated them as Hot Spots, which appear at the top of the database under black labels.

These days, there are even better ways to find the data you’re looking for. We often forget that we could use the program's ability to handle Boolean operators to better focus searches.

We decided it was time to change our diligent ways and spend a little time re-familiarising ourselves with Info Select.

We’d never cared too much for the calendar feature, probably because early versions of the program used a "tickler" format which forced you to enter asterisks beside a date. It seemed a little clunky to us. Ticklers are easier to enter these days, and the calendar allows you to link appointments to notes, keep diaries, enter repeating appointments, even execute programs at a certain time, or email reminders to yourself.

Email is one of the big improvements in the latest version. We get far too much email to want to store it in an Info Select database, but the average user might find it very useful indeed to be able to handle email from within the program, with the ability to retrieve messages instantly. It supports both POP3 and IMAP servers, encryption and filtering, although those features aren't as sophisticated as they are in programs like Outlook.

These days, Info Select even has its own Web browser and Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP) connections for Internet newsgroups, which allows you to retrieve news articles directly into Info Select, or create new articles and post them to newsgroups.

Other new features might radically change the sort of information that you might choose to store in Info Select. The addition of “selector grids”, which allow you to create tables and organise information in a more structured way means that might want to use the program to create schedules and business plans, manage information on employees etc or better organise the way you save details of things like purchases.

You can get even more organised than that, using Info Select’s new ability to handle simple spreadsheets. Cells can hold formulas based on other cells, and perform automatic calculations.
The new checkmark feature can be very useful when you’re doing something like planning a trip.

Info Select costs $249.95 from Step Up Systems. Upgrades cost $99.95. We suggest you should be much more diligent about using it less diligently.