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Every Monday, I think about all the things that I have to accomplish in the week that starts, and the only feeling I get is that I wish to spend just another weekend before starting all over. I am sure that with a precise schedule, things would look much better, and while I have a notebook and some sticky notes that I use from time to time, Active Desktop Calendar is a proper solution for the 21st century.


Setup

Active Desktop Calendar's last version is 7.18, being released earlier this month by XemiComputers. Fully compatible with Windows Vista, this program comes in a package that's not large at all, with only 3.39MB in size. As I was expecting, installing it was a piece of cake, as you can see in the screenshots below...

Interface
During the 42 days-long trial period, you can take advantage of all the features of the full program, and I am sure that learning how to use it won't take long at all. While not being a work of art, Active Desktop Calendar's interface is easy to use and well organized. All the icons look great and match their purpose well, so you won't get confused while working with the program.


Features

When opening the program for the first time, I had a really pleasant surprise. Using a wizard, you can easily import the data from your Google calendar, or connect with Outlook for the same purpose.

Since each day can have different meanings for your personal and professional life, you don't have to mix your family's birthdays with all those meetings from work. To separate events into categories, Active Desktop Calendar uses layers.
You can load layers as you wish, so everything will be as clear as possible. Each time a layer gets crowded, you can create new ones to organize your tasks better (for example, you can have more work-related layers).

Since I mentioned work-related layers, then it would be nice for other people in your organization to know what you are doing and when, but you don't have to worry about this, since data layers can be shared on a local network without problems with Active Desktop Calendar.

Apart from the alarms that you can set for each event in your calendar, the best part is that you'll always have the current month in view on your desktop...because that's the reason this program is called Active Desktop Calendar, but I won't say no more. From here on, you have 42 days to enjoy it, so take your time, but first let's draw the conclusions, shall we?


The Good

Active Desktop Calendar is very easy to use and its data exchange capabilities recommend it for those that need to have their Google calendar or Outlook agenda on desktop, but not only them.

The Bad

The overall look and feel of the program can be slightly improved - maybe a skinnable interface and more keyboard shortcuts, for the start.

Conclusion

For only 19.90$, Active Desktop Calendar can give you back a lot of the time you'd loose without proper time management. Just enable the alarms, once you input your events, and just do what you do - this software will take care of your job events, and you won't forget your grandmother's birthday ever again!

Developer: XemiComputers
Price: 19.90$
Trial Link: Download