Whatever you're doing, there's always a point when you need to do something else. You might be writing a letter in View or Wordwise and need to look up an address or phone number to put in it. Or you could be working on your latest program when suddenly you feel an urgent desire to make a few notes.

Owners of MS-DOS business computers have long had the solution, with memory resident 'pop-up' utilities like SideKick. Now BBC Micro users have the same facilities with Permanent Memory Systems' latest package, Genie.

Genie is very similar to the SideKick package in that it offers a number of desktop utilities - notepad, diary and so on - at the press of a key. But there are a few extra and significant improvements with the BBC Micro package.

Genie uses special hardware. It consists of a small box which connects to the normal ROM sockets, and the BBC Micro thinks it's just like any other ROM. I've got the package plugged into an EPROM cartridge for my Master, which means I can easily transport it between home and work, should I want to.

But there's a lot more to Genie than the machine thinks. The box holds the software, along with 32K of memory for the date - like addresses and the contents of the notebook - and another 32K of RAM into which the whole main memory of the BBC Micro is moved when you call Genie into action.

To do this you simply hit CTRL-SHIFT-G, or if you're at a point when you can issue a star command, *GENIE will do the job. This calls up the main menu. The choice is between an address book, telephone book, notepad, desk diary, calendar and calculator.

If you're using a Master 128, the date and time are automatically taken from the Master's real time clock. The telephone book is also generated automatically by taking the names and numbers from the address book files.

The screen presentation is attractive and consistent. It uses an 80-column mode, which means you can get a reasonable amount on to the screen.

The most immediately useful feature is the notebook. This is presented as a series of pages. Moving between them is a trifle awkward - you choose the browse option, move around until you find the page you want, then Escape, select the work option and finally do the required editing.

When you get to the end of a page you have to Escape out to the menu to select a new one. Again this is awkward, especially if you've busy taking notes while on the telephone - something I use Genie for quite a bit. It's only a minor problem, but it would be better to have the scrolling text editor offered by SideKick.

The address book uses a fixed format, giving spaces for surname, first name, address, phone number and some details.

The other main part of the system is the desk diary. This gives a page of information similar to the notebook, for each day of the week. There is also a calendar, with today's date highlighted. And you can move very rapidly through it a day, month or even year at a time.

I suffer a sensation of dread whenever I'm told that a package has an on-screen calculator. They're usually awful affairs which require you to move a pointer around, and so are tediously slow.

I'm relieved to say the Genie calculator is excellent, particularly as it uses the normal numeric keys. It's unfortunate it doesn't have hex and binary modes, like the calculator in ACP's Advanced Control Panel, but it is large and clear, as well as easy to use.

The best thing about Genie is that the memory which holds the data is all battery-based - so you don't have to keep remembering to save it to disc before switching off the machine, although you can do so if you want a backup.

The other good thing about it is that it seems to work with almost anything - including second processors. I used it from within Spell Master, which had itself been called from within View. When I escaped out of Genie I went back to the spelling checker with no problems. That meant I was using 176K of program - who says the BBC Micro is short of memory?!

Genie failed only with a Master 512. It worked fine at DOS system level, but after being called from within PC Write it dumped me back into mode 3 instead of mode 0. Permanent Memory Systems is working to resolve the problem, which could be useful as SideKick itself doesn't work with the 512.

There is the option to lock Genie with a password. That helps you to protect confidential information, but I find having to enter the word each time I call the program slows me down too much.

The program can also be set up the way you like it for screen colours, interlacing and date stamping of note pages. These options are stored in the battery-backed RAM and so don't have to be re-entered.

Genie is a superb package. It's one of the few utility packages that I now couldn't be without. And apart from a minor problem with my pre-release version, which has since been corrected on production models, the software seems remarkably problem- and bug-free.