In order to keep things in order, your busy schedule might need an improvement. For example i browse a lot of sites and test some software products I’m interested in, but for some reasons I forget, I don’t have time, I become lazy or something like that and forget to write about it (this also happens with other different stuff i have to attend to). So I’ve heard that a quick reminder, an alert or something, might help stay on track, because let’s face it: there are so many things to write about and you continuously discover them and by the time you decide to write about one thing you discover another one, much greater and so on and so forth. So, in order to keep things in order I’ve decided to test a few calendar apps that could do the trick.

Yes, as weird as it sounds i have tested Google Calendar only once, mainly because i wasn’t interested in it. I really don’t know what to say about it except the fact that i think all the apps developed by Google speak for themselves. Simple, easy to use, friendly user interface and very productive. I took Google Calendar for a spin and i was impressed but i needed an independent calendar app that could be used offline, without any requirements whatsoever.

Because i am a fan of all Mozilla apps i couldn’t help it and tested their Sunbird. It can be run on most of the operating systems out there and of course it is available in many languages. To make an idea of how Sunbird looks feel free to check out the screenshots. Mozilla has another solution for Thunderbird users. It’s called Lightning and it’s basically an addon that can handle your calendar from within Thunderbird. Practically Sunbird and Lightning are almost one and the same, but Sunbird is more like a standalone app. Unfortunately i’m not using Thunderbird anymore as an RSS reader (Wizz kicks in here) and for the moment i don’t need an email client. So Lightning isn’t a solution for me. Sunbird is a great calendar app but i need to keep things VERY simple and always at hand (for example on my desktop).

The next app i played with was the popular Rainlendar. As far as the differences between the lite and the pro version, there’s no big deal and you can manage without them. Basically the pro version has support for Outlook and for Google Calendar and the possibility of having network shared calendars. If you feel like these features would be of great help, you can have them for only 15 EUR. For the moment i am trying to get used to the idea of planning my schedule based on the calendar. Rainlendar has a really great support when it comes to different languages. You can check the official language page to see the current progress. In order to have a decent integration with the rest of your desktop (theme, wallpaper, icons, etc), you can choose to use skins that can add a little style to your calendar. A clean GUI with all sort of options you might need to manage your calendar is available. Hotkeys support, alarms are considered a must-have and are also available. Along the calendar itself you can also configure a “ToDoList” and an “EventList” which are more than useful. Also a tray icon that provides you quick access to options is always at hand. Fore a complete feature list check out the site. In conclusion, Rainlendar seems to suit me best and i recommend it to anyone else who wants to keep things simple yet organized.

PlainSight Desktop Calendar is also an interesting application. Unfortunately this one requires Microsoft Outlook to run (this is a HUGE drawback). I think it would be in their best interest to develop independent apps (especially eliminate Microsoft related dependencies). Practically it is another calendar for which you can choose glossy skins and use it to import and manage data from Outlook. A new feature (available only in the pro version) is the possibility of displaying forecast information related to different cities. It costs almost the same as Rainlendar and surprisingly it has almost the same features (To Do list, Event list), but this is probably because that these features are very common to calendar apps. Desktop iCalendar is also developed by the same company. Here is a complete feature list of it. iCalendar outputs the same information almost in the same manner as Rainlendar (even the tray icons are almost the SAME), so i think it’s needless to say which are its features. Wrapping it up, iCalendar is a real competitor for Rainlendar as there are few differences between them.

Another (this time more professional) calendar application i tested was Active Destkop Calendar. With it’s ultra suggestive name, this app gives back more than you could want. It’s just a little bit more expensive than the above apps (29.90 USD) but it sure is a neat app. It can display data directly on your desktop, it’s compatible with Google Calendar and Outlook, it has quite a bunch of visual customization options like icons, skins, fonts, colors, etc., it can create backups of your data and also export or import from CSV and iCal files and it can share calendar data over the network. It mainly provides the following modules: calendar, notes (maybe an Events version), tasks (To Do version), alarms and contacts.


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