We are a four-person, three-Macintosh family. In addition to the normal school, business, and personal appointments that we must keep, we run three small businesses that each have a unique set of advertising, accounting, and tax deadlines. Over the past year, we have missed enough deadlines and appointments to pay for several copies of Easy Alarms.
I tested Easy Alarms version 1.1 on a Mac IIci running System 6.05 (without multi-finder), and briefly, on a Mac Classic running System 7. I did not test the color-setting, sound-recording, or networking features. I will describe the System 6 version and make an occasional reference to the System 7 version.
Since Easy Alarms is a desk accessory, installation was straightforward in both System 6 and System 7. The documentation assumes that you are not using Suitcase II or Master Juggler. This is not a problem as long as you know to intercept references to Font/DA Mover and follow the corresponding procedures for Suitcase II or Master Juggler.
When you choose Easy Alarms from the Apple menu, an Easy Alarms menu appears in the menu bar. You can preset Easy Alarms to automatically open a calendar(s) when the DA is opened. I found this to be the easiest way to work.
When you open a calendar, the current date is highlighted. If you click-and-hold a date in the current month, you get a pop-up menu that lets you choose to create a new reminder, or edit an existing one. There is no visual clue that you will get a pop-up menu when you click-and-hold a date. You can change the current month and the current year with a pop-up menu, but again there is no visual clue.
Once you are in the Edit Reminder dialog box, you can type the reminder message and choose a reminder sound. Sounds can be imported from existing files or new sounds can be recorded on Macintoshes that have recording capabilities. You can also set the volume level of the reminder sound so that it will be different from your default system volume level.
You then use a series of pop-up menus in the Edit Reminder dialog box to set the date and time for the reminder. The repeat pop-up can set recurring reminders like, “Every 5 minutes” or “Every year” or even “Fourth Thursday of every month.”
One of my businesses has to submit a quarterly sales tax report on the twentieth day after the close of each quarter. I was able to set this one up by creating an April 20th reminder and asking it to repeat every three months.
I also set a reminder for a personal income tax return and asked for a daily reminder, two weeks in advance. First, I created an April 15th reminder and chose “disregard after forever” since my taxes are due until they are paid.
Then I chose a 14 day advance notice. This gives me a single reminder on April 1. It will come up in a reminder dialog box that will be titled “14 Day Advance Notice.” To get a daily countdown I will snooze the reminder, one day at a time.
Unfortunately, you can’t just look and see that the snooze button has a “pop-up menu” that allows you to set the snooze time. You have to click and hold the snooze button to see the “pop-up.” I had read this in the documentation, but I had forgotten it. I was almost convinced that it couldn’t be done until I inadvertently held the mouse button while clicking snooze.
The snooze time reverts to the default—set in preferences—instead of remembering my choice. This means I will need to select the one-day snooze time, each time I click snooze in the Reminder dialog box. This is a nuisance.
I would like to be able to set the snooze for a reminder (and its advance notice) when I create it. Perhaps this could be added to the Edit Reminder dialog box in the next release.
Opening and closing calendars is different in System 6 and System 7 because DAs behave more like applications in System 7. For example, you can double-click a calendar to open Easy Alarms in System 7, but not in System 6.
I kept tripping over one “feature” in the System 6 version. When I had several calendars open and I closed one calendar by clicking its close box, the DA would quit. If I closed one calendar by choosing “Close Calendar” from the Easy Alarms menu, the DA and the other calendars would remain active.
I do not know if the problem is in System 6 or Easy Alarms. The documentation mentions this behavior, but it is still frustrating.The System 7 version behaves like I would expect. That is, closing a document does not close the application, regardless of the method you choose for closing the document.
I found it awkward to use Easy Alarms with an application running. I wrote this review in MacWrite II, and I wanted to work back and forth between the review and a calendar. Opening Easy Alarms for the first time made the calendar the active window.
Then I clicked on my review and the calendar went behind the text window. (I re-sized the text window to make sure the calendar was there.) When I wanted to go back to the calendar, I couldn’t. I had to close the (out-of-sight) calendar from the Easy Alarms menu and re-open it from the Apple menu.
By way of comparison, you can bring the already open CALC+ DA to the front by just choosing it again from the Apple Menu. There is no need to close it first.
The documentation says “Easy Alarms automatically remembers the most recent sizes and shapes of your calendars.” I found that the calendar window seems to remember its size and position the first time you close it. In other words, create it, size it, position it, close it, and live with it.
There are two things I want in a program like Easy Alarms. I want flexibility in the way that reminders can be entered and maintained, and I want convenience. I give Easy Alarms high marks for flexibility. I was able to set up a wide variety of reminders that met all of my needs.
I give Easy Alarms medium low marks for convenience because of the interface problems I mentioned. A reminder program works in the real world if and only if it is easy to use. I am worried that someone in my family will get frustrated with Easy Alarms because of minor inconveniences on a daily basis.
As you can probably tell, I have a real need for this kind of software. I can see how to work around most of my complaints, so I will continue to use Easy Alarms and hope that the folks at Essential Software will continue to improve the interface and maybe add a few features that I haven’t thought to ask for.
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