The program comes with a small set of icons, but many more are available for purchase from a variety of software developers. Personally, I generally do not use the icons (although I did add some for the screen shot) because I tend to spend far more time searching for the perfect icon than actually doing the task. However, they're available, and can be very useful.

A feature I use more frequently is the ability to change the color (text and background) and font size of tasks and appointments. This can be done for all items in a particular category (all work appointments in green and personal ones in brown, for example), or to add emphasis to a specific item, and makes it much easier to spot the most important tasks or appointments.

DateBk6's improvements to the standard applications run much deeper than just saved views and user interface, though. The application allows you to link appointments, todos, memos, and contacts to each other. If you have a meeting with a particular client, for example, you can link the client's contact information to the appointment, and link a memo containing your agenda for that meeting as well. Going the other way, you can see everything that is linked to a particular item, such as to see all the meetings you've had with a client.

As a marathon runner, I enter the same sorts of appointments every week: long run XX hours, interval run XX minutes. DateBk6's template feature makes this painless. You create an appointment or todo the way you want it, with the perfect colored font, icon, and alarm settings, then save it as a template. When you invoke the template, the item appears, on the date being shown, exactly as you saved it. You can edit the new item as you see fit (replacing that XX with a terrifyingly high number, for example), but having most of the work done for you saves a lot of time.

DateBk6 uses the same databases as the built-in applications, so everything is synchronized to your computer with a normal HotSync. It stores all of your item-specific settings (fonts, repeats, icons) in the note field of the item. If you add a note to an item through DateBk6 itself, you don't see the notes it's made, but you do see them if you look at the item via the Palm Desktop or another application. I have never found this to be a problem, though, as long as you don't accidentally erase the information.

The DateBk6 experience
DateBk6 is difficult to review because there are so many features deserving of attention. I have been using DateBk6 and its predecessors since I began with DateBk3 back in 1998 or thereabouts, and I was surprised, in the process of writing this review, how many of the features I take for granted in my day-to-day activities are actually DateBk6-specific.

Setting alarms on todos, floating items that drift from one day to another until checked off, putting a four-digit year into an annual appointment (such as a birthday or anniversary) and then being able to see at a tap how many years ago the event occurred... all of these are part of DateBk6, not the base applications.