Calendar Magic

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on December 08, 2010

Calendars and computers go together like bread and butter. Calendar Magic from EuroSoft is the best program we've seen for applying computing power to datekeeping. It can display virtually any calendar system known to science or history. How many calendar programs offer the French Revolutionary calendar; four Hindu calendars; two Balinese calendars; and Julian, Coptic, Hebrew, Yoruba, Ethiopian, Chinese, Baha'i, Bangla, and many other systems? Or can display Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and other holidays, feast days, and significant dates for any year in any calendar system? And save notes, post reminders, and offer 26 extra utilities that do everything from calculate fuel consumption to recurring decimals to biorhythms? Did we mention it's free?

Calendar Magic is very easy to set up and use; all you really need to remember is the Main Screen button, which returns you to the program's compact, customizable interface. The interface displays personal reminders in its main view, below the date bar, with the (optional) Julian Day displayed above the software's home location, London, England. Since we live elsewhere, the first thing we did was change the Location to the Faeroe Islands. The second thing we did was change it to our real location, which also displayed local sunrise and sunset times when we clicked the button to return to the main screen. This is the typical options setup process, and one we found handy. Though you can access any of the program's calendars, dates, times, reminders, quick notes, or utilities from the File menu, the easiest way to use Calendar Magic is to add the calendars and other features you use most often to the Favorites menu, which we did. Now clicking Favorites opened a brief menu listing just our stuff, such as the Persian arithmetic calendar, special calendar for Luxembourg, Chinese religious festivals, and the regnal date conversion tool for all English and British monarchs; essential, each one.

What else? Well, there's the Alarm Clock, Stopwatch, and Reaction Timer. Password protection. Body mass index, blood alcohol content, ovulation, and pregnancy calculators. Mayan and Aztec Constants. Epochs. The Traveling Salesman Problem. We haven't checked yet, but we're hoping it does the dishes, too. Major keeper.

Publisher's Description

From EuroSoft:

Full year and monthly calendars for 26 different calendar systems. Alternative planning calendars. A month-by-month, side-by-side comparison of any two of the calendar systems. The display remains synchronised as you change day, month and year values in either calendar system being viewed. Date conversions among the supported calendar systems. British regnal date conversion. Lists of Western Christian, Eastern Orthodox, Buddhist, Chinese, Hebrew, Hindu, Islamic, Baha'i and Sikh festivals. "Observed Days" for any year from 1990 for around 230 countries worldwide. "Date Detective" command button to tabulate the weekday on which a specified Gregorian date d/m occurs for each of the years in the specified range y1 to y2. The ability to create, display, update and delete reminders for events (birthdays, anniversaries, meetings etc.). A Quick Notes facility. Alarm clock and stopwatch facilities. A time calculator for performing arithmetic with times. "This is your life" information including day-of-the-week on which you were born, number of days you have lived etc. Number of days between any two dates in the Gregorian calendar. Calculation of the date n days, weeks, months or years before or after a specified Gregorian date, where n is a whole number. Special Julian to Gregorian change-over calendars for various countries. Solar and lunar astronomical data. Shortest (great circle) distances between any two of 18000 locations across the world. Current local time and date in any of these 18000 locations. Some major utilities (big numbers calculator, scientific calculator, expression calculator, geometry calculator, factor calculator, fraction calculator, continued fraction calculator, statistics calculator, number base converter, Travelling Salesman problem, currency converter, financial calculator, ovulation calculator, pregnancy calculator, BAC calculator, BMI calculator, unit converter, magic squares etc).

What's new in this version: Version 18.2:

ABSI Calculator - added "A Body Shape Index (ABSI) Calculator" based on research done by Krakauer & Krakauer. The authors argue persuasively that ABSI is a better predictor of premature death due to obesity than Body Mass Index (BMI).
World-wide Locations Database - updated time zone for Libya (now GMT + 1 hour). Based on user input, added various locations in Australia.
DST Information - updated DST information for Armenia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Falkland... See all new features