LBO (Life and Business Organiser) is an inspired title for this Gemini marketed, Intersoft written Diary/Planner. It inspired much interest in my assistant editor and my wife for reasons which are not obvious to myself. I used the ROM version over the busy Yuletide to log my appointments, to try and avoid double booking Christmas lunches, to plan communications and disc/drives features for A&B April and May, highlight the up and coming shows and launches such as Barbican High Technology in Education and Which Micro? and to urgently remind me to write this review!

For those without spare ROM sockets, a disc version is available but, as a program running in main memory, it must reduce the available space for entries. The ROM format also suits the purpose of the software. Instant access is essential for a diary. I did experience some difficulties with a B+/Opus Challenger combination when trying to save my diary entries. CTRL Q quits LBO with a prompt to save the entries or not.

A yes answer only produced the irrecoverable error message from the operating system file locked. And indeed it was, though it hadn't been at the start of proceedings. This was an intermittent fault and believe that ROM clashing had something to do with it. A high priority socket for LBO might be the answer.

LBO is software for the sort of BBC user who turns on at 9.00am - the office user. The office here could be home-based, a school secretary's or the desk in the back room of a retail shop. Diaries are not much use if you don't regularly open them up. Occasional computer users will not get full value out of LBO. If you have a system setup disc (or you use a boot file in battery backed RAM) then going into LBO with a *DIARY filename each morning is a good way to use it, especially since you can't abandon a current task for a quick check on a date and then return. You have to write A&B's Down to Business on a Torch Unicorn, as Jon Vogler does, to be able to do that. It's all or nothing with LBO.

An appropriate file for your diary has to be *CREATEd with a filename of your choice before going into LBO with *DIARY. Otherwise a default file DATA will be created and accessed. Once inside LBO, entries made at the keyboard are stored in memory and sent to a floppy disc file at the end of each session. Cassette users are not supported.

The use of Mode 7 means fast operation, economical use of memory and clear screen displays. When you enter LBO all you have to do is enter the date. LBO is the cleverest piece of software I have come across when it comes to dates. No impossible to fathom ddmmyy format, just a prompt for the date. All entries have default values. The month and year values will change intelligently when you enter the date.

For instance, if you are prompted with 25.12.85, entering 1 for the date will automatically change the default to 1.1.86. Just hit Return to accept the default. One slight problem here occurs if you enter your date as, say 29.12.85 and then make your first entry on 1.1.86. You then find that you have a whole twelve months worth of empty frames for 1985. It won't be a problem for those buying now!

LBO then automatically moves frame by frame through Urgent and Overdue (as reminders), and into the week for the date entered. Pressing C moves onto the next frame. If all the information for this month has been displayed then LBO moves onto the next until no more entries exist.

Hitting A produces a prompt at the bottom of the screen. First you enter the date and, depending on the options you have turned from the control panel, further information about time, duration or range. Finally you type your message in a bottle. Hitting function keys in conjunction with CTRL and SHIFT produces background and foreground colours to add appropriate emphasis to the message. For instance: SHIFT f0, CTRL f2, SHIFT f1, for Acorn launch Master Series in tasteful red on white. Each entry in a given month is assigned a number. This reference is used for the Update and Delete options. Exit takes you to the control panel or main menu.

From here you can jump straight to a given date, check all forthcoming engagements (back to the information frames), check your overdue appointments, urgent messages and the events of the week. This about covers the standard uses of a diary but with LBO there's more.

You can search for any given string in the database. You can move quickly into a week or month planner. The monthly planner indicates the current date if it falls within its boundaries, and the mornings and afternoons which are taken up with appointments already entered. The weekly planner gives information in some detail, down to the nearest half hour.

The full value of the monthly and weekly planner is only guaranteed if the options for time and duration are set. They are off by default and have to be turned on from the main menu. When on, entries to the diary have to be added to with information about time and duration of appointments. This then contributes to the planners. It's highly transparent to the user as they say and very easy to use and very fast, both vital factors in a piece of software which is supposed to save you time.

The documentation which initiates you into LBO is good enough but no more. You'll file it away pretty quickly if LBO is regularly used, which it will be. Naturally you will need hard copy of some of the information on LBO, names and addresses, telephone numbers etc associated with entries. This saves duplicating the information, one on LBO, one in the file. The printer is turned on from the main menu and subsequent information frames, including the planners, sent to the printer until ESCAPE is pressed.

A further labour saving device in LBO is the range option from the main menu. When set, any entry will be accompanied by an additional prompt for the number and frequency of the entry. This means that you can make just one text entry and have it automatically duplicated as many times as you wish at specific intervals of a day, week, fortnight, calendar month or month (28 days)

If your work is done at or near a BBC Micro (LBO works with B, B+ and Master Series, with DFS and ADFS and RAM disc) then LBO could prove a valuable investment. It's not the most complex piece of ROM software but often simple is best. LBO combines all the functions of a diary with some good database qualities. It is easy to use and get results from. If you need a diary application for your standard BBC then it's certainly the best of its kind on the market.