BusyCal | Sep 29 2009 |
TREKKER Great calendaring program from the original developers of the legendary Now-Up-To-Date app of the 90's. It's easy to use, stable, powerful, syncs flawlessly with others, MobileMe, and my iPhone, has great ease-of-use functions that iCal lacks, and is a joy to use! On top of all this, the developers are super responsive. I've emailed three times very late at night and on weekends with suggestions and questions expecting a reply in a couple of days, and to my total surprise my emails were answered instantly and personally event hough it was late at night and even on a weekend. As a long-time Now-Up-To-Date and Contact user (since the early 90's) I've been looking for a replacement since the program was getting old and creaky and wouldn't sync with iPhones. The current Now developers -- not the BusyCal people who were the original developers -- promised a delivery date for NowX that has come and gone almost three years ago and even took people's money for the upgrade without delivering that upgrade until last month -- almost three years later than they said they would and after years of empty promises! To add insult to injury, the new version is hard to use, unintuitive in many everyday functions, lacks copy and paste, lacks undo, lacks drag and drop, has no ability to share with others on a network or over the internet, and you can't even manually copy its database from a desktop computer to a laptop reliably without serious and many times unsurmountable problems, is buggy, has serious sync problems and is overall a frustration and a serious waste of time. I've also tried Daylite, Contactizer Pro, and SOHO Organizer, but have always come back to BusyCal. BusyCal is what Now-Up-To-Date used to be, except updated with all the modern technologies including flawless syncing -- and it's a joy to use on top of that! Add to that their responsiveness and I think they have a winner on their hands! Highly recommended.
(Version 1.0) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
Now X | Sep 6 2009 |
TREKKER Painful-to-use program. Nothing like it's forerunner, Now-Up-To-Date and Now Contact which was developed and written in the early 90's by great programmers (Dave Riggle http://www.busymac.com/about.html) who are long gone -- now they produce BusyCal, which is what Now-Up-To-Date used to be and NowX isn't. I used the former Now programs (from the original developers) since the early-90's and loved them. This version is a giant leap backwards in almost every way. Very unintuitive -- especially compared to NUD/C. Convoluted interface with hard-to-find buttons/controls for what are common everyday tasks, making it frustrating to use. Unreliable and buggy syncing. Far fewer features and less ease-of-use than NUD/C, which was written in the 90's for goodness sake! Basic drag and drop functionality glaringly missing from some places it's needed most. I could go on and on... And did I mention it's been delivered, half-baked, almost three YEARS after it was promised to be released and money was collected from customers and has been held for all these years for the "upgrade"?!?! Questionable planning skills and questionable business practices, to say the least. Way too little, too late. Contactizer Pro, Daylite, and (can you believe it?!?!) SOHO Organizer are way better, IMO. BusyCal is also looking pretty good! Do yourself a favor and check them out before even considering NowX.
(Version 10.0) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
Now X | Sep 24 2009 |
SARASWATI I, too, am very disappointed with Now X, which I had paid for two years ago. The Quick Day and Quick Contact features are useless, as one cannot create new calendar events or new contacts through these handy menubar features as one could in Now Up-to-Date & Contact. There are many other issues with Now X that have forced me to return to the excellent NUDC, with which am happy, except for the fact that I could never network the calendar with a laptop. BusyCal seems it might be just the solution, and I see that it has received good reviews both on MacUpdate and also on Version Tracker. However, the website has been down for two days now, so I'm wondering if this company has already gone belly up!
(Version 10.0) | |
Typinator | Jun 30 2009 |
TREKKER I liked it, bought it, have used it for a long time, and have just decided to trash it and switch to TextExpander. The reason is that I just bought a MacBook Air to go long with my desktop machine because I'm writing a book and sometimes I write in my office on the desktop and sometimes out in a park under the trees on the MacBook Air. I emailed ergonis software to see if I could use ti on both machines, and they replied that they require that I pay them another $26 for a second copy of Typinator to run on the Air even though I only use one computer at a time and no one else is using the computer that I'm not using at the moment. Since I would have to spend the money for a second copy anyway, I am switching to TextExpander instead for about the same as I would have paid ergonis for a second copy. It's not only the two purchase fees, but I'd have to pay TWO UPGRADE FEES as well for EVERY paid upgrade for years to come! TextExpander will allow me to run it on any computer I own, and it also syncs the abbreviations/snippets via my .mac/mobileme account. On top of this, TextExpander works great! Although I prefer the interface of Typinator I'm going to swith because I would not only have to buy another license, but EVERY time there is a paid upgrade in the future I'd have to pay TWO upgrade fees as well. Not so with TextExpander. With TextExpander I pay ONE price, i can use it on BOTH of my machines, and will only have to pay ONE upgrade fee. The differences between the two programs are NOT worth paying TWO purchase costs and TWO upgrade fees every time there is a paid upgrade. Sorry Typinator... I'll miss you, but the TextExpander people have a great product with a much better competitive edge and pricing for anyone who uses more than one computer.
(Version 3.5) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
|
Main
