This feature-rich program places an unobtrusive calendar on your Desktop. You quickly can access your tasks and see details of upcoming events by double-clicking on the day or in the sidebar. Active Desktop Calendar supports multiple users, using layers to store their profiles. You can connect to other people's calendars via LAN to see changes in their schedule, and you also can have the application display your Outlook information. The utility doesn't consume much memory, especially considering all the cool stuff it does.
We noticed a few shortcomings in this overall excellent program. While the window for adding a new note contains a subject line and a body field, only the subject-line text appears on the calendar and the sidebar. You can switch among several desktop images and set the program as the default screensaver, but we weren't impressed by the performance of these features. The images don't stretch or tile, and the screensaver only displays the time and a line of text. Despite this, the functionality and design of Active Desktop Calendar make it useful for home and business users.
This fully customizable calendar displays itself as your desktop wallpaper by integrating with existing wallpaper image. It runs in the system tray and includes notes, tasks and alarms. You can change calendar icons, fonts, and colors. Text only version of the calendar is also available as well as options for marking weekdays of choice and marking dates with notes and/or alarms. If active desktop functionality is enabled program accepts direct clicks on dates, notes and tasks displayed on desktop. You can set each note to have normal (default), private or invisible desktop view. Private notes are displayed as generic text reminder only and invisible notes are not displayed at all on your desktop. Multiuser support allows each user on a single computer installation to have its own calendar data set (notes, tasks, alarms) along with one common data set that is shared with all other users. This program comes with its own screen saver that displays desktop wallpaper with real time clock.
