Keeping Appointments with Windows Calendar

Vista tosses in a new program not found in Windows XP: Windows Calendar. Just like it sounds, Windows Calendar is a full-fledged scheduling program that replaces hastily scribbled sticky notes on the refrigerator. Fire it up by choosing Start --> All Programs --> Windows Calendar.

Shown in Figure 1, Calendar presents a monthly calendar on the left side, your day's appointments in the middle, and the highlighted appointment's details on the right.

To add an appointment, click a day on the calendar, click the time of the appointment, type a description, and start filling out the additional details on the right.

The beauty of Calendar is the way it lets you share appointments through e-mail or by publishing them to a Web site where friends and relatives can automatically subscribe to them, meaning that Calendar will download and display them automatically.

The downside of Calendar is that you have no excuse for being late anymore. Check out the following features of Calendar:

• For a quick way to add dates for holidays, sporting events, TV shows, moon phases, and similar items, visit iCalShare.com. The Web site lets people publish and share calendars.

• Windows Calendar lets you share calendars with people using Microsoft's Outlook program and Apple's iCal program. For a real downer, you may be able to share your calendar from work, as well — ask your office network guru.

• To share your own calendar with friends, click your calendar's name from the Calendars section shown in Figure 1. Then choose Send via Email from the Share menu. Calendar will e-mail your calendar to your friend, where it will appear on your friend's calendar program.

• Calendar lets you assign different colors to your friends' calendars so that you can easily tell which appointment belongs to which person. To remove somebody's appointments from your calendar, click his or her calendar's name and press Delete: All the appointments disappear.