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Software Review: The New Backpack
Wednesday, August 1, 2007 at 10:38AM I have been using Backpack for a little over two years now. In the first year it was great, and my life was centered around it. But 37Signals seemed to forget about it and focus on other new products, so I was pretty sure it would never see another update. I had moved my todo's and stuff over to Remember the Milk and had stripped away most of my Backpack pages. After not using it for a couple months, I figured I could save $9 by canceling the service.
When I went on last week to harvest the last few pages for data and cancel the service, I noticed it had finally been updated. So I figured I would give it another couple weeks.
Well, my first impression was "too little, too late." The only real addition was the ability to move things around to any point on the page. But linking pages had been removed, which meant I had to manually create page links. I checked the forums and sure enough, plenty of people were incensed over having their pages reordered overnight, some rollout bugs, and not having their favorite wishlist features added. 37Signals' responses were a bit aloof and arrogant. I almost added a post of my own based on the strength of that. But, I gave it some time instead.
I switch list services every so often, because it forces me to review everything. It's well worth the couple hours it takes. So I decided to move back to the Pack and see how it worked.
I like the divider tabs. I made pages to organize my current major projects, and really enjoyed being able to put more stuff on one page. The dividers let me have multiple pages worth of info on a single page, which means less navigation.
For example, I made dividers for different milestones of a software project, and could put lists, related notes, and other stuff within the appropriate divider. As the project plays out, I can move stuff to new divisions easily.
I'm going to stick with them for a while longer. This may be the last update we see in a long time, which is too bad. It's really only a matter of time before someone copies this web app and makes small improvements on it...
If you ignore the comments on both sides, this is a very solid service and I still highly recommend it.
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