Companions for Lotus organizer

Despite the name, this isn't a facility to fill your electronic organiser with pictures of buxom beauties (or muscle-bound machos as the case may be). In general, the doyen of Personal Information Managers has kept up well with the paper organisers it was based on, but there's always been something missing. All those handy little add-ins you can buy down at the stationers to pad out your own scribblings. A real personal organiser isn't lived in unless it has a map of the London Underground, a set of recipes you are never going to read, and a table for converting between Albanian and Hungarian currencies.

Companions are a way of filling this gap. Sensibly priced, the idea is to provide essential information for your Organizer, especially if you keep it on your laptop. Initially there are two products - Travel Western Europe and World Citizen. The first is genuinely useful. Apart from the obligatory tube map (it's a shame that the Metro and equivalents aren't covered too), there are sections for each country with the sort of handy information that travellers need, from etiquette and tipping to useful phone numbers. World Citizen, I'm less sure about. This is the sort of gazetteer that CD-ROM encyclopaedias do so well, but presented in Organizer's dull text form it's uninspiring reading. The theory is that this is essential background notes for someone doing business in the country, but I'm not entirely convinced.

Other companions on the way cover finance, sport, events and more. If you like your personal organiser filled with facts, Companions certainly provide some cheap and cheerful stuffing.

Overall - Nice idea of fact sections to add to your Lotus Organizer. Priced at ú6.60 per Companion in the UK. Check out the Web site.