When I first started up the desktop version, BalanceLog asked whether I had a handheld configured. When I told it that I did, it proceeded to re-install the application on my handheld! It did keep all of my settings, which was great, but the install time is quite long, and it seemed unnecessary to re-install the application. As I installed BalanceLog on both my work and home computers, I actually ended up installing the application on my handheld three times. Rechargeable batteries are my friends.

See where you stand: the Balance page
Once the application is installed and configured, it's very easy to use. The heart of the application is the Balance page, which shows you how much you've eaten, how many calories you've burned, and how many more you should eat or burn to meet your daily budget. Figure B shows the desktop version of this page.

FIGURE B

The desktop Balance screen shows your past and present information. Click picture for a larger image.

The Palm OS version (on my Palm IIIxe) is shown in Figure C.

FIGURE C

The Palm OS Balance screen shows your current information.

The Palm OS screen in particular is very well designed, with all of the essential information in a clear and easy to read format.

Adding foods
Entering food information is very simple. Clicking on the apple (which always reminds me that I really should eat more fruit) allows you to search for one of the many foods in the list (raw calamari, anyone?) and add it to your daily log. Foods can be deleted from the log, and the listed amount can be changed by simply clicking on the food.

The food search on the handheld allows you to enter up to five letters of the food's name or brand name. This restriction does not exist on the desktop. A search for 'macar' ends up returning a list of food types including the words "macaroni" and "macaroon," but the list is generally not too long.

One very nice feature of the desktop (not, unfortunately, available on the handheld) is the ability to set a food to be a favorite, so it appears at the top of the list when you do a search. I eat certain things over and over, and it's nice to see them right at the top of the list. There's also an option in the Preferences to allow you to set how many times a food should be accessed before it automatically becomes a favorite, which somewhat makes up for the lack of this feature on the handheld.

Once the list of foods appears, you click on the item that you want, and its list expands to let you choose the actual food. Figure D shows the results of the "macar" search, with "macaroni and cheese" selected.

FIGURE D

I searched for "macar" and selected "macaroni & cheese."

On this screen, you can see one of the downsides of the BalanceLog food lists: numerous entries for "regular." When you enter your own foods, you should be careful that you don't make lots of entries with a type of "regular," and you can change the current ones to remove or rename them. Fortunately, before adding a food to the log, you can look at its information to see whether it's what you want to add, as shown in Figure E.