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This thread migrated from prior board - please excuse the formatting
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posted by Greg88

It seems like these are the front runners for Now users looking for a
new program. I've checked out both websites, but it would be great if
someone could provide a helpful summary/comparison. Can they both
import Now calendars? If so, what are the limitations of this import?
I am looking primarily for a full-featured calendar program (the
contact issue isn't as important for me). Does one particularly shine?
How do the calendar features stack up to Now?

I've been using NUTD since the late 1990's, and have tens of thousands
of events, To-Do's, etc. I don't want to lose the immediate,
searchable access that I currently enjoy for this long stretch of my
personal and professional life.
Many thanks in advance.

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posted by Wilson Ng

Well, I downloaded Daylite 3.9.7 and spent some time this morning in
it. The contact section does look good. But there's a lot of double-
clicking to edit anything. There is a preview pane to show summary
information about a task, event, or contact but I have to double-click
it to edit it.

Daylite is a very good contact solution. You can link tasks, events,
notes, and attachments to your contacts.

One option missing in Daylite is the ability to scroll by weeks in the
monthly or weekly views. This is a must have for me. I like to see the
next 4 weeks in the calendar to get a general overview of what is
coming up next. But if I'm in the last week of the month, I have to
jump to next month to see what is ahead.

Another missing option is the ability to show tasks on the calendar
itself. I am on the weekly and monthly calendar views a lot. I'm a
visual kind of guy and like to see tasks on the calendar itself.
Sometimes I like seeing it in a list but more often, I'd rather see it
in the monthly or weekly view.

Daylite does show tasks in the task pane for the month or week you are
in. If I'm in March 2010, I'll see all the tasks that are due for
March 2010. If I jump to April 2010, I'll see the tasks that are due
for April 2010. It has that capability which is similar to iCal. So
I'll have turn a task into an event to have it appear on my calendar.

If you don't use a task manager like Things or OmniFocus, Daylite has
a good project and task manager feature. Now X had very basic task
features and no real features for projects. There was some talk about
adding a project/task manager module to Now X when the calendar,
contact, and server module was finished. So Daylite will outshine
BusyCal and Now X in this department.

At the moment, I've been very happy with OmniFocus because I'm a GTD
convert. For non-GTDers, Things is probably a better choice with its
simpler interface. You can switch to OmniFocus later if you need more
demanding project/task management.

Even when I was using Now X, I did most of my tasks in OmniFocus. I
would enter tasks in Now X only if it was time-sensitive.
Most of my tasks tend to be floating. They are important and I'd like
to get them done but they aren't due on a certain date. So I'll get
around to it eventually. I would enter them into OmniFocus because
that program is better suited for handling projects and tasks for me.
Now X's task features were simple at best. Now X had no project
management or sub-tasks features at all.

Here's an example of a floating task: If I didn't cut my grass by
Wednesday, no serious consequences will occur.

An example of a hard deadline task: If I didn't turn in my taxes by
April 15th, then I'm gonna have some serious issues to worry about.
Like maybe the IRS will coming knocking on my door eventually.

Cutting grass goes into OmniFocus as something to remember to do.
Finishing my taxes would go into my Now X calendar (or BusyCal)
because it has a "hard" deadline.

In the GTD world, you put all your tasks/projects that have a deadline
on the calendar. But you would put all your other tasks (undated) into
a project/task list. I avoid putting "artificial" deadlines on
projects/tasks. An example is "I'd like to get project X done by next
Thursday. But if I don't get it done by next Thursday, nothing
catastrophic will happen. I can always reset the artificial deadline
to next month." This type of project/task goes straight into
OmniFocus. Anything with a real deadline goes into the calendar.

Like you, I stayed on the Now bandwagon because NUTD was my bread and
butter. I loved NUTD but it was getting long in the tooth. I had hoped
for so much more in Now X. I had hoped for extra modules that would
offer GTD, project management, etc.

But I'm finding that I actually operate better when I have separate
programs for separate things. In my toolbox, BusyCal focuses on my
calendar. I'll hand off projects/tasks to OmniFocus. Then Address Book
will service my contacts. I'll be exploring Bento in the next few days
for my contact management. For the moment, DevonThink works as the
storage area for my contact's notes, history, phone calls, notes,
invoices, etc.

I had always dreamed of a PIM program that did everything but it would
be foolish to do that. It's similar to Adobe CS4. A graphic artist
will use Illustrator for illustrations, Photoshop for pictures,
Dreamweaver for web design, and InDesign for page layouts. I wouldn't
expect Adobe to create an all-in-one program that did everything for
the graphic artist.

Daylite does look promising for many people. Daylite might be good for
you if you don't already have a task manager and contact manager. If
you are looking for an all-in-solution, Daylite might be the best.
I tried syncing SOHO Organizer to my iCal events but it mangled up the
import. Address Book import worked for me though. So I'm gonna give up
on SOHO Organizer until a new version that actually works better with
syncing.

SOHO Organizer has that look and feel that Now X was striving for. An
all-in-one solution. If syncing actually worked, I'd probably use
that.

I lik BusyCal's simple and elegant features that focuses on calendar
only. If you are looking at a toolset that features different
programs, BusyCal might be the better tool to serve your calendar
needs. Then you'd have to look elsewhere for your contact needs. I'll
be looking at Bento in the next week or so to see how it handles
contact management. It appears promising with links to Apple Mail and
Address Book. I think I saw something that linked to iCal tasks as
well.....

BusyCal also allows me to subscribe to iCal web calendars. I've got
several things like my NFL Football schedule, my TV show schedule that
I subscribed to. There are also several calendars to download as well.
I can get US Holidays, Jewish Holidays, Chinese holidays, and a
variety of other calendars.

I'm betting that you can probably use iCal to subscribe to these
calendars and then have Daylite to sync to iCal to grab those
holidays. But BusyCal has it built in and it's so easy to use.

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posted by Wilson Ng

MarketCircle has a web page specifically targetting Now users
including a 30% discount:

http://www.marketcircle.com/daylite/nowsoftware/

Daylite's feels a little stiff and awkward for me the last time I
tried it a couple of years ago. I can't show tasks on the calendar.
But turning time-sensitive tasks into events might be the solution
there. There is a tutorial on the web site the does show you how to
use GTD with Daylite. But I do like the contacts portion. Daylite
definitely takes some getting used to.

I've decided to go the BusyCal way for my calendar for the moment.
Still thinking about a contact solution now. Bento looks promising but
I haven't had time to play with it. But I may just explore Daylite a
little further when I have more time.

I had Now X sync my calendar to iCal. But I'm cleaning up duplicate
events in my calendar right now. The contacts seem to work for the
most part but I have to go through my contacts to grab any Custom data
and notes attachments. It does look like some of my contacts are
missing contact information so I'll have to pour through all those.

I was thinking of SOHO Organizer but it doesn't seem to want to sync
my iCal events correctly. But it did suck in my Address Book data.
One thing that I did explore was to export my Now X calendar events to
a text file. Then I opened the text file in a Numbers spreadsheet and
formatted it. I selected certain columns such as Summary and
Description and formatted it as word wrapped cells. Then I saved it.
This became my archive file. If I needed something from the past, I
can refer to information with a quick Find command. I'll have to deal
with attachments separately and put an extra column to indicate any
links or contacts attached to that event. If I need to quickly look up
something, I can go to my Numbers spreadsheet. Yes, I know it's not
ideal but sometime we have to look at the amount of time and energy
needed to convert such a large task over. I'd love to have my history
in my calendar program but I'd have to take a whole week off just to
double check my data.

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posted by ronr

On Mar 25, 11:16 pm, Greg88 <ggolde...@charter.net> wrote:
> It seems like these are the front runners for Now users looking for a
> new program. I've checked out both websites, but it would be great if
> someone could provide a helpful summary/comparison. Can they both
> import Now calendars? If so, what are the limitations of this import?
> I am looking primarily for a full-featured calendar program (the
> contact issue isn't as important for me). Does one particularly shine?
> How do the calendar features stack up to Now?

As one of the "NOW Refugees," I've been test driving BusyCal for a few
days and am generally impressed. Events seem to have basic info intact
-- haven't checked out more esoteric aspects. Look is good. Custom
repeats is simple. Option-drag copy of events works, unlike last
versions of NOW in my experience. Moon views and weather are fun
little gizmos in month view. Integration with Google Calendar is
smooth as silk. Will probably buy.

Haven't looked into Daylite yet -- have read it's overpriced.
Leaning to Contactizer Pro for Contacts. Address Book is rock-solid,
but I'm spoiled after NOW, so it just doesn't slice-n-dice info nearly
enuf for me.

Look forward to other suggested migration plans from NOW Refugees.

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posted by

Here are a few nice features that BusyCal has that Daylite, Now X, and iCal don't have.

BusyCal has a nice list view that allows me to view either 1 week, 1 month, 1 year, or 1 decade. Then I can enter a search term easily and find any task or events easily. That was difficult to do in Now X.

I also like having Rich Text Fields for tasks/events. Now X had lacked this because it was still early in development.

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I was listening to the Typical Mac Users podcast on iTunes. They had an interview with the BusyCal CEO. He said it took them 3 years to develop BusyCal. First, they focused on syncing and released BusySync. Then later they added the calendar portion and created BusyCal.

They admit that it's not done yet. They are looking into support for CalDAV and Exchange. For the moment, they recommend going to iCal to connect to CalDAV and Exchange. Currently, BusyCal offers read-only support. So editing will probably come later. They are also looking into offering an interface similar to Now X's tabs or Now Up-To-Date's sets. They stated that they will be busy adding features to BusyCal. When development finally slows down for BusyCal, they may look at other projects. One popular request for them has been a contact solution as well.

The BusyCal folks have their own Google Group and are very active in answering. It is at groups.google.com/group/busymac

BusyCal definitely feels like a Mac application. Daylite doesn't really have that Mac-like simplicity and feel to it. But it definitely does a lot. Be warned though.... the Daylite iPhone app is $50.00 a year.

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Contactizer Pro does look nice. Most of my projects are centered around contacts anyways. It appears to have a good task/project manager. BusyCal's tasks are simple to-do lists similar to iCal. Perfect for some folks who don't have heavy to-do list needs. But Contactizer Pro looks like it can handle some heavier duty stuff for me. I'll also have to explore this as well!

For me, the question: Daylite or BusyCal? doesn't even make sense.

BusyCal = a better iCal. A calendar.
Daylite = calendar (events), address book (contacts), project management and more.

To over simplify; one is a single-blade knife and the other a Swiss Army knife.

and do they both allow multiaccess via a server???

Simon,

I don't know because I do not need that feature.

BusyCal - http://www.BusyMac.com
"BusyCal allows families and small workgroups to easily and cost-effectively share calendars on a local area network and over the internet without the need for a dedicated server. Shared calendars can be viewed and edited by multiple users and changes are instantly synchronized between users. BusyCal also syncs with Google Calendar offering online access and sharing cross platform."

Daylite - http://marketcircle.com/daylite/
"Single-users, multi-users, telecommuters, road-warriors — Daylite will work for you."

Thanks Dave. Just talking to a colleague who had been using multiuser daylite over the web for 2 months and so far very happy with. Asked him how he cleans the data and he did not know. AS in NUTD option/quit. Suggested he find out quickly. Have you migrated yet?
Best regards,

Dave, Have you migrated yet?