PlainSight Desktop Calendar

As unpredictable as April showers, this weather-and-calendar application combines good looks with a quirky interface and irritating stability problems. Fundamentally, PlainSight Desktop Calendar is a simple desktop organizer. Double-clicking its system tray icon brings up an attractive desktop calendar with a choice of three skins. In addition, the program retrieves weather forecasts from the Web and displays them as small graphical overlays (clouds and suns, for instance) on the main calendar or as large icons on a separate weather calendar. The stylish graphics give a good first impression, but the interface is hugely frustrating. Double-clicking the system tray icon may display your calendar, but double-clicking again doesn't hide it. For some reason, setting window transparency to 0 percent makes the calendar invisible, rather than the other way around. The seven-day forecast doesn't display dates or the names of days, and some of the icons appear to be unavailable. As for the organizing functions, to enter a note you have to right-click the calendar and select Browse instead of just double-clicking a date. This calls up a different calendar view, where once again you have to right-click the day in question. Adding insult to injury, at this point in our tests the program displayed an "Invalid Class String" error and wouldn't let us proceed. Inexcusable. PlainSight Desktop Calendar is promising, but right now it makes us feel like someone rained on our parade.