PandoCalendar X 7.0.3 — A minimalist KISS Calendar for keeping dates and notes
Reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad ©
2007
Panda System
http://www.pandacorner.com/PandaSystems/PandoCalendar.html
Released: 05
September 2007
Freeware
Requirements: Mac
OS X 10.4; Universal binary; 1.2 MB Hard Drive Space.
Versions 6.04 and earlier are available for use with
earlier operating systems.
Strengths: Simple,
uncluttered, focused and easy to use. Exceptional help support.
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Weaknesses: The
new updated system, for now makes it more difficult to extract calendar
contents to a text document for annotating and formatting (see minor
discomforts.)
Copyright Notice: Product and company names and logos in this
review may be registered trademarks of their respective companies.
The software was tested on a 1 GHz dual processor PowerPC
G4 Macintosh with 2 GB DDR SDRAM running under OS X 10.4.10.
Disclaimer: When
reviewing share or freeware I will often use the developer’s product,
functions and features descriptions. All other comments are strictly my own
and based on testing. Why
need I rewrite the developer’s narratives, if they are clearly written?
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Introduction in Including Publisher’s Summary
I’ve not been partial to any of he calendars I’ve tried out.
My least favorite is Apple’s iCal followed closely by all the tools developed
to keep one contacts in tune with my comings and goings. I have two needs in a
calendar tool. First, I should be able to list all of my appointments with
enough information to prepare for them. Second, I need a schedule and reminder
systems for the repeated events (birthdays, anniversaries, and meetings) that
recur routinely during a year. Since the only one using the calendar is me,
myself and I; sharing calendars is a needless complexity. The only other
requirements I have is to be able to print my schedule so that my wife, who is
computer adverse, can know what and where for my external commitments.
I’ve been using PandoCalendar since I first discovered in
the classic days prior to OS X and have been able to be responsible about
what’s and where’s and to-dos of my life in a manner that belies my generally
being somewhat professorial (e.g., scatter brained). Therefore it took no great
leap of faith, when I read (actual was notified) about this, a new major
upgrade of this trusted program to download it for my use.
Annotated From The Publisher’s Description — This useful Mac-only program places a fully
functional calendar on your desktop. PandoCalendar can display the numerical
number of the weeks of the year, display the calendar with European style weeks
(Monday being the first day and Sunday being the last), assign notes to any day
of the year by clicking on the day in the calendar, and set alarms to remind
you of time sensitive events.
PandoCalendar Its appearance is completely customizable. You
can change the calendar's font, size, and the colors used to draw the calendar;
the calendar background can be entirely transparent, so you can still see your
desktop picture; you can center the current week (so you are always able to
look back and ahead a full month at a time). You can also have PandoCalendar
automatically plot the days you work. Great for people who don't have a
Monday-Friday work or meeting schedule!
Using the Software
What’s to do… Move the "PandoCalendar" application to the
Applications folder. If desired you set the application to start at startup. I
prefer to add it to my dock where it will be less obtrusive.
And for those users who like nice as well as functional,
Checkout Pando's Frames for a variety of frames, 27 sets in all, to go with
PandoCalendar.
http://www.pandacorner.com/PandaSystems/PandosFrames.html
The help file is extraordinarily thorough for a free ware
product and contains information, for those who don’t intuit Macintosh
Software, to get you started.
For those folks who don’t regularly backup their computers
the instructions for backing up your events become particularly important. Now
despite the fact that you don’t care about the safety of rest of your files,
you might want to keep tract of those critical dates keeps the piece in your
home and at work. The database used by PandoCalendar is kept in you (home >
library, application support folder > PandoCalendar folder >
PandoCalendar.eventsDatabase.) Copy it to a floppy disk; you don’t really want
to be more of a looser than necessary.
Rather than discuss the specifics of using PandoCalendar for
setting individual appointments, regularly repeated meetings and all the rest
of the stuff that you’d use a calendar to keep track, here are four screen
shots to wet your interest.
Minor Discomforts
Exporting Events to Text — Except for one thing that
got lost in the upgrade, I love the new PandoCalendar version 7.x. What got
lost was the straightforward ability to export my appointments and notes to a
text or MSW file. To do so now, I must print the event range to PDF and then
export the PDF (from Acrobat) to editable text. I could work in Acrobat Pro,
but MSW is easier to use when I create an event listing that my wife posts on
the refrigerator.
Within a day, I received the following response — “In
version 7 the event format changed, which required completely rewriting the
import/export code. The older dBASE
files were always of limited use, since no other calendar program could import
them. With these considerations in mind, I decided not to spend the time, and
delay the update again, to rewrite the import/export code. When import and
export are added again, I plan for it to be to the iCalendar format. Of course
exporting to a text file will also be an option. Currently, I don't have a ETA
for when this will happen.”
Conclusion/Recommendation
This is a great product whose price is right. I’ve used it
though all of its iterations from version that predate 5.5.6 (OS 7.5) though
version 6.0.4 (OS X 10.2) and now the present version 7.0.3. The product has
never crashed, nor have any of my appointments been lost. Indeed, as a result
of being a pack rat, I still have the appointments created in earlier versions
stored on a backup CD. One of these days, when bored or looking for a déjà vu
moment, I’ll install them and go pack in time for an hour or two.
If you have no need to share a calendar with anyone else,
this is the product for you, try it — it’s free.
PS
All things free come with a price. In the case of
PandoCalendar is that small a Biblical quotation will appear Sunday at midnight
or whenever you check for Sunday events. If you are not a Christian, you can
dismiss with quote with a click of a mouse.
I don't have a problem with this, having at time read both
the old and new testament in great detail. Although I'm not strictly speaking
a Christian, for me the quote only becomes an issue if you want it to be. I
find the quote reflecting the developer’s beliefs a small tradeoff for an
overall very effective program. [Paraphrased to reflect my view, in part from a
review by EASER Sep 6 2007 on the
MacUpdate site.]
PPS
KISS means - Keep It Simple, Stupid!
