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Use Electronic Calendars 2007-03
Calendar, without it, our lives would be chaotic. Years ago we use paper calendar, these days, we can use electronic calendar software to organize our lives and save us time.
In the office, Microsoft's Outlook is the most popular email and calendar software. At home, we tend to use the free Outlook Express for email, which does not have a Calendar feature.
You no longer have to spend $100 for Microsoft's Outlook to take advantage of electronic calendar. Free on-line calendars have arrived. Google , Yahoo!, and MSN each have an offering, and each has its own strength and weakness. For example, Yahoo offer the ability to sync up calendar items with your cell phone. Google allows you to add searched events into its calendar easily.
A few of the important features to look for are the ability to setup repeating dates and reliability of reminders. With the on-line calendars, you have two primary channels to receive reminders, email or text message to your cell phone.
You can use calendar event to remind yourself to book tee time for golf, schedule heater and air conditioner services, date to expect on-line purchased items, Home and Garden Shows, dinner reservations, grocery store shopping time and items to shop for, birthday, anniversaries, holidays, … etc. Basically, anything and every thing you want to do at a specific time. For Birthday, Anniversary, Valentine's day, you can set the reminder to be at 2 weeks (or more) ahead. This allows time to shop for gifts, make dinner reservation, order flowers, mail the gift,…etc.
The other advantages of an on-line calendar are the ability to use it anywhere and the ability for multiple people to use the same calendar. Available where ever you have internet access, you can check your calendar instantly, you don't need to call your spouse and ask if you have plans made already or not, just check the calendar.
A family can use the same calendar. If you enter who, when, and where information in a calendar event, everyone will know where you are, what you are doing, and when. For example, scheduled weekly grocery shopping time and items list, everyone can add items they need on the list as they think of it. Another example; lets say you are running late, all you need to say is, please pickup the kids. Your spouse can lookup the time and address in the calendar.
Speaking of calendars, don't forget Daylight Saving Time start and end date has changed. You need to download a patch from Microsoft to change DST settings. If you have Windows XP with SP2 and you have Automatic Updates turned-on, you are all set. You can follow this link to read more about Automatic Updates. If you have trouble updating your computer, visit Microsoft.
As you can see, there are many advantages to using an on-line calendar. However, do keep in mind you need to be smart as to what and how much information you put on Web. Also, if your internet service is interrupted, you can't retrieve the calendar information.
Next month, we will discuss how to dispose or reuse your old computers equipment.
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