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From: an12280@mdaali.cancer.utexas.edu (David Gutierrez)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Alarming Events (was Indispensable INITs...)
Message-ID: <4100@lib.tmc.edu>
Date: 11 Sep 90 22:30:51 GMT
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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