Having been in the captivity of another Casady & Greene product (Glider 4.0), I have had to force myself to do an otherwise pleasant task. As it turns out, QuickDEX II is almost as fun to use. If you have lots of names and numbers on a dog-eared Rolodex®, hate dialing the phone, and appreciate speed, then QuickDEX is for you.
Setting Up
Casady & Greene includes an installer with the DA, making the Font/DA Mover completely unnecessary for set up. QuickDEX II can run off a floppy drive, but prefers a hard drive environment. The Installer makes set up easy. I was ready after only a few clicks of the mouse.
Off and Running
QuickDEX II acts very much like a Rolodex®. The user can create up to eight card decks at a time, and fill them with any kind of text information—including memos, to-do lists, and names, addresses, and telephone numbers. QuickDEX can be configured to open your most-used deck automatically upon first opening the DA. It’s easy to browse the cards in a deck simply by pressing <return> between cards, and QuickDEX also has a lightning-fast find feature. By just typing the first few letters of someone’s name or address, QuickDEX will display the card with the entered information milliseconds later. It was fast even on my Classic!
Other Nifty Features
When QuickDEX II is selected from the Apple menu, a special menu headed by “¿” appears right after the “Edit” menu at the top of the screen. All the menu commands can be accessed by menu or keyboard shortcuts. Pressing <command–T> adds a time/date stamp at the cursor, which helps if you use QuickDEX to take notes while talking on the telephone. Pressing <command–A> adds a new blank card to the active card deck. QuickDEX will team up with the envelope DA of your choice and print the current card on an envelope automatically. Other menu features include: deleting a card, saving changes to a card deck, printing a card, creating a new card deck, and the Preferences menu, which allows you to specify miscellaneous options for a card deck. The well-written manual explains how to do other tasks, such as copying names and addresses into a letter, choosing the default card deck, choosing the first card in a deck, and linking cards for a specific purpose (to be called, etc.) with labels.
The Magical Dialing Feature
QuickDEX II really saves time and effort by dialing the phone for you. You can do this as I did, with a modem, or you can use the less desirable method of holding the telephone mouthpiece next to your Mac’s speaker. The manual offers tips for the latter. It’s easy to specify dialing rules for local and long-distance calls using QuickDEX. The “magical” part I like so much is the ability to type in credit card access numbers which can be dialed with a keystroke combination, if you don’t always want to use the default long-distance carrier for your area. Clicking on the little padlock next to your “secret number” box permanently locks and hides the data, making it impossible for a casual user to steal your numbers. (Unlocking a closed padlock deletes the information.) Then when you’re ready to call someone, find their card and click on either the “Dial” or the “Long Dist” box. QuickDEX dials the number on the card (preceded by or followed by whatever information you provide in the Dial Settings box) and pops up a box prompting you to disconnect the modem after the handset is picked up. Clicking on the “disconnect modem” box connects the handset! I was surprised to have this happen correctly the very first time I tried it. A word of warning: the credit card dialing feature requires a modem that can accept strings of more than forty characters. Many lower-priced modems (including mine) cannot handle a dialing sequence this long. Check your modem’s manual.
A FREE Bonus!
Casady & Greene threw in two free card stacks with the package. One is a introductory data file with some tips and dozens of other cards with addresses and phone numbers of major airlines, hotels, computer companies, and people like John Sculley. It includes handy toll-free numbers for reservations, ordering, or technical support. But the real bonus is QuickZIP, which is a listing of over a thousand U.S. cities. Typing in the name (or partial name) of a city calls up the city, its state, Zip codes and area code. Pressing <return> takes you to any other possibilities for the city you typed. For example, if you typed “Augusta,” you’d first get a listing for Augusta, GA, then Augusta, KS, and finally Augusta, ME. Thanks, Casady & Greene!
To Sum Up
QuickDEX II is a slick little DA that does its stuff well and does it fast. The package is complete and well thought out. The folks at Casady & Greene have remained faithful to the Macintosh interface and created a small-information database that is easy and fun to use. For an additional $45 the discriminating user can get Super QuickDEX, which includes QuickELOPE (an envelope addressing DA) and PrintDEX II (a label/address book printer). Both are designed to interface with card decks created in QuickDEX II. I’m already finding the DA to be indispensable and well worth the small retail price.
#1: QuickDEX II finds what you’re looking for at breakneck speed!
#2: QuickZIP is included with the package and locates a city’s Zip codes and area code.
#3: The dialing settings box allows you to specify rules for QuickDEX II to follow.
#4: Specify the time/date format in the Preferences box.
#5: I’ve got my “to–do” list at the top of my personal card stack.
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The article above is reprinted from Mac Monitor, the newsletter of The Savannah Macintosh Users Group. It may be reprinted in a single issue of newsletters published by non-profit user groups. Payment shall consist of a single issue of the newsletter in which the article appears, sent to the following address:
