owen@raven.phys.washington.edu (Russell Owen) (09/12/90)
In article <4098@lib.tmc.edu> an12280@mdaali.cancer.utexas.edu (David Gutierrez) writes: > Alarming Events is a combination INIT/desk accessory that maintains a > schedule of your appointments. You can schedule meetings with the DA > calendar and have the INIT notify you of the event when it comes up. You > can specify recurring events and request advance notification of events. > It also maintains a to-do list for you. I own (and use) Smart Alarms, and it is very solid and reliable, but the user interface could be much better. From the literature I've seen, Alarming Events seems to offer most of the features that are missing in Smart Alarms. But is it really a good program? Anybody used both programs enough to compare them? How buggy is Alarming Events? Russell Owen owen@raven.phys.washington.edu Astronomy Dept. FM-20 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195
rrr@u02.svl.cdc.com (Rich Ragan) (09/12/90)
In <7353@milton.u.washington.edu> owen@raven.phys.washington.edu (Russell Owen) writes: >Alarming Events seems to offer most of the features that are missing in >Smart Alarms. But is it really a good program? Anybody used both programs >enough to compare them? How buggy is Alarming Events? I used Smart Alarms for several years and found it quite satisfactory except that the alarm dialog box is modal. My communications package that supports multiple connections via a packet protocol has a handshake timer which drops circuits on a timeout basis. Alas, Smart Alarms' modal dialog prevents the foreground application from getting any CP time until it is dismissed so I lost lots of connections. I complained to Jam Software and they said they might fix it and they would put me on their beta test list. The result with their new release was: it was not fixed and I never got a shot at beta testing. As a result, I bought Alarming Events when it came out. It is more elaborate than Smart Alarms but perhaps not quite so easy to use (I have made suggestions to CE Software in this area). As for stability, there are known problems with the initial release (1.0.1 if memory serves) that are being actively worked on. In particular, AE interferes with SCSI device number 1 such that popup alarms don't work. I have had two other types of crashes that I have traced (via TMON) to AE and reported to CE. I'm not entirely pleased with the crashes (and have remedied one by patching SuperClock) but I have had enough good experiences with CE Software in the past to believe that they will fix the problems and listen to the suggestions for improvement. Therefore, I plan to stay with Alarming Events. -- Richard R. Ragan (408) 496-4340 Control Data Corp., Silicon Valley Operations
mposton@uci.edu (Michael Poston) (09/12/90)
In article <7353@milton.u.washington.edu> owen@raven.phys.washington.edu (Russell Owen) writes: > How buggy is Alarming Events? Here's one incompatibility (don't know if it's a bug or not, or if it is, where the bug is): Alarming Events cannot be used on a machine running System 6.0.3 *and* 32-bit QuickDraw version 1.0. The only work-around is to upgrade to System 6.0.5 and 32-bit QD version 1.2. This has been reported to and confirmed by CE Software. CE's forum on Compuserve has been very lively the past month or so with praises/curses/bug reports/feature wish lists for Alarming Events. Anyone interested in AE with access to CI$ might want to follow some of the activity there.
an12280@mdaali.cancer.utexas.edu (David Gutierrez) (09/12/90)
Before CE Software sent me Alarming Events, I was using Smart Alarms and the multi-user Appointment Diary. I was pretty happy with Smart Alarms, except for the modal dialogs and some of the user interface features. In particular, you could specify advance notification for a meeting 15 minutes in advance, but not 30 or 37. Recurring events could be set for daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly, but not for the third Saturday of every month. The windows for the week-at-a-glance in the Appoinment Diary were too small to show more than a couple of appointments and the Appointment Diary was not fully integrated with Smart Alarms. In addition, JAM Software never sent us an upgrade notice for version 3.0 of Smart Alarms. We finally found out about the upgrade through the net (thanks, y'all) and sent our upgrade request in. Five weeks ago. One day we'll get it. CE Software seems to have a better reputation for customer service and frequent updates. One advantage Smart Alarms with Multi-User Appointment Diary has over Alarming Events is in multi-user use on a network. My department chairman wants a scheduler that will let him leave his calendar open and will let his secretary schedule appointments for him as well as let him schedule his own appointments. Smart Alarms with etc. will let two people have the same calendar file open, as long as the two of them are not examining the same day. The documentation for Alarming Events seems to indicate that one user must close the file entirely before another can use it, unless it is placed in an AppleShare folder to which only one person has read/write access while others have read-only access. We have also found an incompatibility between Alarming Events and Avatar's MacMainFrame software. If the Alarming Events DA file is open in Suitcase, the MacMainFrame program hangs while loading. The Alarming Events INITs can be present as long as the DA file is not open. I don't know where the problem is, but since a MacMainFrame board costs more than Alarming Events, that user got my old copy of Smart Alarms. David Gutierrez an12280@mdaali.cancer.utexas.edu "Only fools are positive." - Moe Howard
steve@violet.berkeley.edu (Steve Goldfield) (09/12/90)
In article <26ED4E93.5291@orion.oac.uci.edu> mposton@uci.edu (Michael Poston) writes: #>In article <7353@milton.u.washington.edu> owen@raven.phys.washington.edu #>(Russell Owen) writes: #>> How buggy is Alarming Events? I don't know how buggy it is. But if you phone CE Software, they will send you a demo disk that works for 30 days to try it out for yourself. I got one for my boss, but he hasn't had time to try it out yet.
Chris.Gehlker@p12.f56.n114.z1.fidonet.org (Chris Gehlker) (09/14/90)
owen@raven.phys.washington.edu (Russell Owen) asks: > But is it (Alarming Events) really a good program? How buggy is Alarming > Events? It's really a useful program. The only feature that I wish it had is the ability to prioritize To Do Items by some criterion other than time. As for buggy, I've been suspicious of it because about the time I installed it, my Mac became subject to freeze ups after long periods of no activity or only serial activity. I stuck in a couple of inits that came with Norton Utilities at about the same time so I couldn't be sure that Alarming Events was the culprit. In fact I first suspected Norton's Disklight cdev because I have identical setups on my personal II and my company IIci except that I don't use Disklight in the ci. The ci just purrs along, all the problems occured on the II. Well I had determined that trashing Disklight didn't solve the problem and trashing all my init's did solve the problem. I was about to test the hypothesis that Alarming Events in incompatible with the II but compatible with the ci when a message here suggested that there were problems with installing Alarming Events under Suitcase. I quick check of the ci confirmed that, sure enough, on the ci the Alarming Events DA was installed direcly in the System File while on the II it was in an open suitcase. Not installing the DA with suitcase seems to have solved my problem but it's early to draw that conclusion. -- Uucp: ...{gatech,ames,rutgers}!ncar!asuvax!stjhmc!56.12!Chris.Gehlker Internet: Chris.Gehlker@p12.f56.n114.z1.fidonet.org