Almejandro's Daily Planner for Windows

We expect planners to be easy to use; they're supposed to make our lives easier by helping us keep track of events and appointments in a straightforward way. Almejandro's Daily Planner takes a more complicated approach to this task. It's not the most intuitive program we've ever used, but it does offer some interesting features in addition to the basic datebook functions.

We had to spend some time looking at the planner's interface before figuring out how to proceed. There's a monthly calendar and a list of daily tasks, which made sense. There was also a pane that displayed a 404 error; we're not sure what Web content was supposed to be present here, but it wasn't. The most confusing part of the program was the long list of menu options down the left side. Once we experimented with them they seemed fairly straightforward -- this is where there are options for adding new events, searching for events, accessing the address book, and so on -- but something about the way it's laid out makes it hard to understand at first. We found it interesting that the program lets you assign dollar values to events; if you're looking for a simple way to track not only what you have to do all day but how much it's going to cost you, Almejandro's Daily Planner can do it. The program also lets you check off completed tasks, view reports showing the tasks assigned during a specific date range, and print daily agendas. The built-in Help file is well written and thorough. Overall, Almejandro's Daily Planner isn't the most intuitive or the most feature-packed planner we've seen, but it's not a bad option once you get used to its layout.

Almejandro's Daily Planner installs a desktop icon without asking and leaves a Start menu icon behind upon removal.