[via GearDiary - Reviewed by Judie Lipsett Hughes]

One of the factors that made me drag my feet when deciding whether or not to fully migrate from the Palm OS to Windows Mobile was that the two software titles I considered essential were only available for the Palm OS at the time: one was Beik’s Woman which I use to track “female stuff”, and the other was Calorie King’s Diet Diary. Both programs came with desktop software, so although I would eventually lose the convenience of being able to enter or retrieve data on my PDA, I was still able to use these programs familiar interfaces on my desktop. That’s not to say that I didn’t hold out hope that one or both would eventually become available on Pocket PC, and sure enough - Woman eventually was…but not Diet Diary. Thus began the quest for a comparable program that I could use to record meals and workouts.

When I recently received an email regarding the new v2.62 release of Iambic’s Health and Diet Manager for Windows Mobile Pocket PC (HDM), I was eager to give it a try. I knew there would be a slight learning curve as it was a different program than I was used to, but I hoped that in time I would grow to like it as much as I had Diet Diary. According to Iambic’s site, HDM “does everything from tracking your health-related vitals (resting pulse, blood pressure, hours slept), calories consumed and calories expended, to helping you create an action plan for eating and exercising. Plus, it is easy to use.” Would Health and Diet Manager provide what I needed in order to use it regularly and as it was intended? I would soon find out…