Franklin Electronic Rolodex Electronics RF512 Handheld

With two demanding kids and a husband, my life has been pretty crazy. It seemed that lately I have been making appointments for this and that. My calendar is getting pretty full. So I went looking for something to help me organize this mess. I found the Rolodex RF-512a electronic organizer. Finally, I have everything I need in one little pocket pal.

The Rolodex RF-512a comes with everything the newbie to PDAs would ever need. Its small slim design is packed with all kinds of little helpers and it is backed by 512kb of memory. I was looking for something that offered a phone book, calendar, and an alarm. I got all of these things and then some for a very low price.

These are the following options that are standard on this RF-512 model:

?The Phone Book: This section offers three types of phone books. Business, Business 2, and Personal. In each entry on any level you can add information as to a persons name, address, phone, cell, pager, fax, work information, and even add a little note about the person or company. To access the three different phone books, you just press the phone button on your organizer to until you reach the right directory.

?Internet: Here you can store all your favorite or needed web addresses.

?Time: In this area you can set your time to your local time or world time such as military time. When you first turn on your organizer you will see the home time screen. In this area you can edit the time, date and location. You can set the location to a standard listing off the organizer such as New York or Los Angeles or you can customize it with your local town name.

?Schedule: In this area you can use your calendar to add it scheduled events such as a doctor?s appointment, or staff meeting. You can also create an alarm to sound with each event.

?Calculator: This organizer offers you the standard calculator.

?To Do List/Memo: This area works much like to Scheduler. Here you can create little notes to yourself or create a to do list.

?Anniversary: Here we have a little section for those who want to keep track of important dates. This also works like the scheduler but with no alarm to remind you of the event.

?Expenses: This section is great for those who travel a lot or just need to keep track of company expenses. Being in the military, this comes in handy with moving expenses and deployments.

?Conversion: The RF-512 is equipped with built in conversion rates. Here you can convert feet to meters or U.S. dollars to Euro dollars. You can also set a currency rate which is handy if you are going to be overseas for a while.

?Calendar: You get a full basic monthly calendar here. The RF-512 allows you to look ahead to 200 years from now. Also from here, you can schedule a to do item, anniversary or memo.

When you need to use your organizer in the dark. Never fear you have a back light here. The keys do not illuminate, just the screen. This organizer will shut itself off for you if you forget after 5 or 6 minutes. Using only two triple A batteries, this organizer will last a lifetime. Which is mainly due to the DataGuard protection battery. If you have to replace your batteries or if they go dead your information will be saved. Just remember not to lose your password. You are not required to set up a password to use this organizer but if you do, it will protect your phone book, and reminder sections. There are three different types of tones on this organizer. You can set it up to chime every hour, at a certain time (as used with the alarm clock) or you can set it to chime at the same time everyday. The alarm clock part of this organizer is pretty loud as well. This is a nice extra when traveling or even if you happen to lose your household power.

There is only one minimal downside to this organizer. If you visit Franklins web site, they will tell you that you get a PC SYNC kit and CD with your purchase. When I bought mine, I received to SYNC kit but rather a certificate to order one and only pay shipping and handling of $5.95. The purpose of this kit is to synchronize data on your PC or organizer. If you have the same information on your computer that you do on your organizer, you can use this kit to update one or the other. The kit includes a serial cable, PC SYNC software, installation manual and user manual which is on CD.

For even more information on this organizer or to see what else Franklin has to offer, check out www.franklin.com.