X-FET

Keeping a tight schedule is a common practice, not only for building projects, but also for managing a business. Schools also work on fixed timetables for both teachers and students to have easy access to organized activities. With the help of computer applications like X-FET, managing a school and recording activities gets a lot easier while the whole workflow is greatly enhanced.

The name doesn't quite make it clear, but this is actually the portable edition of FET. This poses a number of advantages, like the possibility to take all work and schedules with you by storing database files, as well as the application itself on a USB Flash drive. Another good thing is that the target PC's registries remain intact, and implicitly so does the health status.

With the interface being pretty simple and rather old for its time in terms of visuals, accommodation is one of the least of your concerns. All areas can be easily accessed from the menu bar, or simply by navigating through the dashboard tabs for data, time, space and timetable.

However, a little time spent going deeper into the set of features and you realize that it's not quite what you expected in the first place. The application is packed with tools that let you keep track of different aspects, ranging from activities and working hours, to teachers, students and even buildings or rooms.

Creation processes mostly consist of a prompt asking you for a name for the specific entry, with different layouts to display data. Statistics and various reports can be generated to better get ahold of info of interest. Filters are shallow and most of the times missing, with tools automatically displaying statistics in a default layout.

What's more, the raw presentation of all info leaves a little something to be desired. Timetables need to be generated first and the process of just viewing upcoming events can become a little time-consuming. There's also a single option to export under plain text formats, while options to only save data of interest are missing entirely.

All things considered, we come to the conclusion that X-FET is a simple, straightforward utility that can be used for small teaching environments or schools, but it can get a little difficult not only to input, but also to manage data for larger educational institutions. With a poor scheduler and no built-in alerts system, practicality is rather questionable overall.