PC Mechanic, New Article

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 03:00 AM PST

calendar2 The reason anyone uses electronic calendaring (other than to see what day it is) is for scheduling and reminders. Calendaring is supposed to improve our lives by giving us better ability to track events, because these days you basically need it due to the onslaught of info modern life throws our way. We’re thrown so much info that you probably can’t even remember what you had for breakfast this morning. That doesn’t mean you’re forgetful. It just means you have other stuff going on that’s more important than remembering what you ate.

The three choices you have with electronic calendaring is client, phone and web.

Client

This is the oldest of electronic calendaring and dates back several decades. In fact, for most computers sold at that time, advertisements routinely promoted calendar programs as a selling point with that whole "organize your life" shtick.

On the paid side of things, there’s still Microsoft Outlook, which to date is the most feature-filled communications program there is. Many people consider Outlook simply email, but that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what it can do. For scheduling and calendaring, it is the best; there is no other communications suite that does as much as Outlook does.

On the free side the arguably best calendaring suite is Mozilla Sunbird. If you use the Mozilla Thunderbird email client, the integrated of Sunbird for Thunderbird is Lightning.

Pros of calendaring clients

When you want the most options and features, nothing beats client-based calendaring. It’s the easiest to get around in, the fastest in terms of finding and modifying events, and has power-user options such as the ability to attach files (images, documents, etc.) to specific events.

Cons of calendaring clients

The seemingly endless features of calendaring clients is as much of a weakness as it is a strength. In Outlook for example, it is all too easy to program something into an event and then completely forget how to modify or remove it because you can’t remember the steps you took to do it. Calendaring clients also suffer from the fact that even with synchronization capability, there is always something that’s for-client-only and will not sync to other devices.

Phone

Fortunately right from the get-go, smartphone calendaring made made to be powerful because the designers knew people would use it extensively – and they do. Every smartphone has a built-in calendar app, and they’re all better-than-average.

Pros of smartphone calendaring

The single largest advantage is the calendar goes where you go and you’re not tethered to a computer just to see your events. I also know of no smartphone calendar that isn’t lightning-quick to get through when you want to add in an event. Also, any good smartphone calendar app will have options to sync somewhere right out of the box.

Cons of smartphone calendaring

More or less all limitations with smartphone calendaring have everything to do with how you access your data. Everything is accessed on a small touchscreen, so it’s likely if you want to do anything advanced with your calendar, the functions you need to access will be buried several menus deep – however this heavily depends on which phone you have, what OS and what calendar app you’re using.

Sadly, most smartphone calendar apps aren’t nearly as good as ones made for PDAs years ago. If for example you had an old Dell Axim, with very little effort you make entries at double the speed you could on your smartphone. You could also edit entries much easier as well. This is because PDAs were designed to be data assistants first while smartphones are designed to be communications devices first.

Web

Web-based calendaring has been around almost as long as the world wide web has. The oldest still-in-use (and recently updated) web calendar I know of is Yahoo! Calendar, and as far as I know, every web-based email provider offers a calendar.

Pros of web-based calendaring

The best feature of web-based calendaring is its accessibility. It can be accessed on your desktop computer, your laptop, your smartphone, public computer or anywhere where there’s internet access. And no matter what platform you’re on (desktop or mobile), the calendar will work. In addition to accessibility, web calendars are arguably the easiest of the lot to use; they are designed from the ground up to be simple in operation.

Cons of web-based calendaring

The simplicity of a web-based calendar is its biggest weakness. Compared to clients and smartphone apps, web calendars are the most watered-down. For simple scheduling and reminders you’re okay, but for advanced stuff you’ll be left wanting more.

Some web calendars are better than others. Hotmail’s calendar (login to Hotmail, click ‘Calendar’ on left sidebar) is really good. The interface of the Hotmail calendar is spot-on and works very well. Google Calendar is also very good but suffers from an interface that’s old and seriously needs an update. Yahoo! Calendar, the elder of the group, works and was recently refreshed but has a very clunky interface. Easy, yes, but clunky.

What’s the best calendar?

If you want the be-all/end-all calendar that connects to everything, syncs everywhere, has the most tenure, most options and the best design, nobody can beat Outlook – but it’s a paid program.

With smartphones, the best calendar app is no app – use the web.

On the web, even with the aging interface, Google Calendar still rules the roost here mainly because of such wide adoption pretty much everywhere. Thankfully the mobile version is a lot easier to get along with compared to web-based. The only part where it sorta/kinda fails is with notifications. On a smartphone, a local app is better if you need ‘louder’ reminders for calendar events.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Calendaring: Client vs. Phone vs. Web

NewEgg vs. Guitar Center

Posted: 03 Feb 2011 02:30 AM PST

When it comes to certain audio hardware, NewEgg, a favorite among tech shoppers, doesn’t always fit the bill in this respect. In the video above I do a quick comparison to see which is the better site for finding a relatively simple piece of audio equipment – an audio mixer.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

NewEgg vs. Guitar Center