Task coach is a cross-platform and open source project written in Python available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Though it was not build to be a GTD specific application, it contains all the necessary elements to build one. The great thing about that, is the fact that it won’t limit you keeping it as simple as a todo list or complicated as an advanced GTD or project management system.
The user interface and the application in general, is as friendly as the developers claim it to be, it’s running fast and saves data to tsk XML files. That means that you may have as many files as you want to separate your items according to your needs. There are handy backup facilities so you won’t accidentally lose your data and import/export functionality using HTML and CSV formats. Additionally you can run Task coach from a removable medium, to take it anywhere, a really useful feature if you have no internet connection to your work computer.
Things look familiar into Task coach. You can create tasks and assign them to categories. Categories can be contexts, projects or anything you want and can be created in an hierarchical fashion for your convenience. Alternatively, you can use just tasks as projects, since subtask addition is really easy to be done using keyboard shortcuts or toolbars.
There are a lot of customization options for your items (color, font, icons etc) and each task or category can hold a really big number of data types such as notes, start/due/completion dates, other task dependencies, progress, budget, effort and even file attachments!
Views are also quite customizable, since you can chose from a big number of fields to show, use pre made task templates or completely hide tasks with a future start date.
Killer features:
- Multiple file management
- Run from removable medium
- Complete set of functions
GTD mode:
- Categories as contexts and projects or, parent tasks as projects
Weaknesses:
- Task screens contain so many tabs that can be confusing to new users. Maybe a simple/advanced setting switch would make it more friendly
- No file password protection
Supported elements: Tasks, categories, due dates, recurring dates, reminders, task prerequisites, efforts and time tracking, task progress, budget, notes, attachments.
Supported services: Printing/preview, import CSV, export HTML, CSV and iCal, searching, data file management.
Mobile access: iPhone/iPad.
Cost: Free
Conclusion : Task coach is a simple but complete task management application. Although its an open source project, it manages to stand out for its stability, speed and user friendly design. If you prefer to keep your data locally and not on some web server you should definitely give it a try.