Visual Day Planner 7.1 Buffalo NY

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Originally published at Internet.com

Visual Day Planner 7.1, developed by Inkline Global, has been evolving for several years. Version 4.3 was the first that we reviewed and we found it to be a very handy program. Let's take a look at just what this neat little program can do for you, and some of the neat new features that are built into the new version. If you have ever used a planner or PDA, you know that they come in handy for keeping up with appointments, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Well, with the new era comes laptops, which just about every person who travels a lot or uses them for school and business has. Visual Day Planner 7.1 just might be the godsend that will keep up with day to day or even year to year dates and appointments quickly and smoothly.

Visual Day Planner 7.1 is a neat little program that looks just like a big calendar that will display in the form of a Monthly, Daily, Weekly, or Yearly view that is totally configurable with alarms, and all sorts of fonts and images that can be used to highlight those special days in your life. You can also save your favorite calendar to your desktop as an image that is readily available as soon as you boot up that computer. Now, before Visual Day Planner I was always searching through my old leather organizer trying to remember anniversaries and birthdays of my kids, but now I have my Visual Day Planner set to alarm a few weeks before the date gets here and then again a few days prior so I can't forget anymore. This is a great little tool for the student that is always on the go from class to class and getting assignments or research locations on the web or in books.

Installation of Visual Day Planner 7.1 couldn't be easier, you just follow a few on screen prompts and you are up and running just that quickly. Help is excellent and tech support is very good if you might have a question that you can't find in the help documentation. After installation we found that most of the setup involved was already done and all that was left was to start using the program. Plugging in the dates and appointments was easy, so much so that my 6 year old was able to do it without any instruction. Most of the features were drag and drop and font selection was as easy as using any other Windows application. We will let you know what we found good and bad with this new version and let you know if it is right for you. Next: What's new in 7.1?

What's New In 7.1

Visual Day Planner has gone through a lot of phases in its releases starting back to version 4.3 which we did a review of about a year or so ago. We have seen many changes in the way the program works and how you use it. Visual Day Planner 7.1 has had some major face lifting along with some other useful and maybe not so useful enhancements. We will try to discuss the new features and let you know how they work. First on the list of enhancements is the interface which has been changed to give greater ease of use, controls are more simplified allowing for easier interpretation of what various icons mean. There has been an Advance Recurring Event Function added, which allows you to set an event to recur on specific days, weeks, or months which can be planned out indefinitely. Also enhancements to the Network Alarm have been added, allowing multiple users to set alarms allowing each other the ability to be reminded of important task in real-time. Data is now automatically locked and unlocked via a new automatic locking mechanism, while the new Tray Icon handles the program startup with just a single click instead of multiple mouse clicks. Undo and Redo is now supported and there is support for Public Holidays in twenty countries. In previous versions of Visual Day Planner you had to contend with the icons for the program being loaded all the time, but not anymore, you can now load and unload them as you need them saving you plenty of resources. Date Difference is now customizable with your choice of colors and fonts.

Now, InkLine Global, Inc. didn't stop there with just new features to the program, they also gave you some nice tools to go along with the program like a snooze feature, color calendar printing, network automated feature, database management, and quite a few bug fixes thrown in.

What's Nice and What's Not?

While we liked what we saw in the new version of Visual Day Planner 7.1, we were really impressed with the speed at which it now loads. In past versions that we have seen loading speed was slow and sluggish and once the interface was up the program just didn't seem quite as compact as we would like to have seen it. The visual appeal is much better now with smoother lines and menu choices being more informative and organized now than in past versions. It is now much easier to schedule events and alarms both on a stand alone and network and it now seems to work first time every time with recurrences as well. One area that we did notice that is still a glitch in the armor of Visual Day Planner 7.1 and has been a problem in just about every version that we have tried, and that is the fonts on the calendar, which don't exactly reproduce correctly. We noticed that some of the fonts had the bottoms cut off on our text as started putting in appointments. This could have been due to another part of our computer's setup, but we think it's just a minor glitch in the program.

How Does It Stack Up?

We searched around the Net for comparable programs to measure Visual Day Planner 7.1, with very little luck in terms of finding programs that can do all of the things that this program can do. Microsoft's PIM built into OutLook is similar in terms of scheduling and some alarms that can be set, but just isn't in the same league as Visual Day Planner, especially when you take into consideration the many features that come with it. Programs like Calendar creator plus will make very nice looking calendars that you can post information and schedules to, but when it comes to constant updates, alarms that can be set concurrently, along with the fonts, icons, colors, styles, and speed Visual Day Planner is in a league of its own. Next: The Bottom Line

Visual Day Planner 7.1 is a great little program to use that is easy to install and set up. You can search through any week, month, or year to find text in your planner, and we mean fast searches. The fonts and calendar display are fully customizable. You can easily set reminders, appointments and memos by simply typing into it like a word processor. It also provides strike-through text allowing agenda to be crossed-out as they are completed while keeping a legible record. You can drag-and-drop, along with adding and editing picture icons onto the calendar days. You can even create a wallpaper that displays all of your appointments and important dates for that month so you will never miss them. If appointments and important dates are your worry, Visual Day Planner 7.1 will take the worry out of your life.

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