Every time I think that people around me are wising up to the need for personal data security, something happens to shake my faith. A close friend whom I helped recently with some online banking and product setups, called me frantically and in desperate need of user name and password information. He'd lost the information after the scraps of paper on which he'd written everything were swept away and thrown out by some cleaning staff in his own business office. Dopey him. The data was stored in my personal copy of Code Wallet Pro 2006. Lucky him.

I reviewed Code Wallet Pro 2006 Mobile Edition and compared it with the Pocket PC and Windows XP Desktop versions. They're essentially the same. The Mobile and Pocket PC editions automatically detect and sync with the Desktop version if it's installed. For active testing we used a Palm Treo 700wx (Windows Mobile 5), a Dell Axim X51/520MHz (Windows Mobile 5), and an older Compaq iPaq 3950 (still going strong with Pocket PC 2003). Code Wallet Pro 2006 installed and ran without any problems on all three devices. When you purchase the Mobile Edition of CodeWallet Pro 2006, your registration code will work on the Pocket PC and the Smartphone version as well.

The first step when reviewing this sort of utility is to populate the thing with sufficient data to make it usable in real life and business. I didn't have any luck importing a TXT file exported from TurboPassword and after several attempts simply gave up the effort until I had a chance to read the online help.

The formatting instructions for imported files specify a TAB-delimited text file using the word CardName as the very first item in the header (the top line of the file). That accomplished, I imported the file using the desktop version of Code Wallet Pro. The only problem was that none of the data matched up with the fields and categories in the original TurboPassword database. The data was all there—nothing lost in the export/import process—but having to mess around with a large TAB-delimited text file in order to get the formatting straightened out so that all of the data can be imported accurately, requires time I simply do not have. This sort of laborious effort should be completely unnecessary. DeveloperOne and every other commercial and shareware developer out there really have to smarten up and get their data import/export act(s) together. Obviously, if you're using a data vault utility for the first time, importing legacy data isn't going to be an issue or task for you. But for those of us who've used data vault utilities for years, exporting data from the old vault and importing into the new one can be an aggravating process.

Among the smart features in Code Wallet Pro, printing ranks near the top. DeveloperOne suggests it in their product marketing, but I actually do it—print important records that is—in order to have emergency and other crucial information available to SWMBO in the event of accident, injury or worse. I keep a printed selection of key data in a safety deposit box.

Code Wallet Pro 2006 offers a wide range of built-in forms which make it easy to select something appropriate and start entering data right away. The category list is comprehensive and none of us could think of anythingsignificant to add. You can modify field names (change "Account" to "Card Number" for example) in any card, add new categories, add new fields, and organize everything in separate wallets, separate folders and subfolders and so on. DeveloperOne also offers a constant stream of free new forms.

The core of any data vault utility is its encryption strength. Code Wallet Pro 2006 offers excellent security and we couldn't find any way to hack it using the array of tools we keep hidden in the back room. A number of IT people and professed hackers/crackers had a go at Code Wallet and couldn't break it.

Beside US and UK English, CodeWallet Pro 2006 for Windows Mobile and Desktop has been localized in a number of languages including French, Italian, German, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian (Bokmal and Nynorsk), Dutch (Belgian and Netherlands), Hebrew, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian and Afrikaans.

Code Wallet organizes data in a flat database structure. What you see onscreen is easy to understand. The wallet view is a simple list of wallets you've created. A wallet is a master category. Tap a wallet, enter the requisite password and it opens to display Folders you've set up (which represent sub-categories) and the individual Cards (the individual data records). The software works well and quickly displays data even when searching or calling a record from a large wallet. Although it could use a landing page or home page of some sort, I found the utility easy to use. Within a wallet, you can drag & drop folders and records.

It won't be long before insurance companies start challenging business losses based on a failure to have in place adequate password/logon security. We live and work in the midst of increasingly deep and scary virus, worm and trojan intrusions. Anyone who doesn't protect file, banking and personal information access codes by storing them exclusively in a software data vault, may be in for much bigger trouble than necessary after a theft.

Cons: Not strictly a 'Con', the usability benchmark for this sort of utility is still TurboPassword, but Code Wallet Pro 2006 is very close behind and offers a larger feature and function set than TurboPassword. Log on to Code Wallet, select a password record and you'll find that password display is hidden by asterisks—you have to either tap the screen or select Edit to actually display the password—a needless extra step. If you create more than one wallet accessible with the same password, Code Wallet will open the first wallet which uses that password (bypassing the wallet list screen altogether), or the last wallet which was opened using that password (again bypassing the wallet list altogether). It would be smarter for the software to ask, after you've input the password, which wallet you want to open. If you've logged on to the wrong wallet, you can get back to the wallet list by tapping the OK gadget. Tapping the OK gadget in the wallet list closes the utility and takes you to the Today page. We'd prefer to tap the wallet list OK gadget and revert to a logon screen.

Pros: Code Wallet Pro 2006 represents a current view of the world, emphatically stating that it's really not safe out there. I tend to agree. There are too many stories of lost, stolen, hacked, cracked and otherwise misused personal information. The more we focus on taking smarter steps to secure our personal data, the better off we'll all be. Code Wallet Pro 2006 is a good choice because it's easy to install and set up, easy to carry around, easy to use, secure, and synchronizes nicely with its secure Windows desktop companion utility. It's one choice among many competing products but still well worth a recommendation.