BizTime

BizTime records your appointments using a simple but outdated interface. Because it does not let you set the duration of appointments--only when they will start--BizTime is not reliable for easily scheduling an entire day or week. (If you have Microsoft Outlook, it will do the job much better, even if it's overkill.) The demo version of this program is limited to five dates and appointments, and the registration fee is 25 Euro, or US$33 as of this writing.

BizTime has a distinctly antique feel--and not in a good way. The simple main interface has 10 small buttons and sits at the top of your screen. Strangely, the program differentiates between dates and appointments. (According to the program's logic, dates are recurring and appointments are one-time.) They are recorded in separate holding areas.

Four of the buttons let you (respectively) add a date, list dates, add appointments, and list appointments. When you set a date or appointment, there is no way to have the program remind you at a specified time before the actual appointment. You also can't see these items in a standard calendar format.

The program may also be buggy. When I restarted my computer after testing it, I received multiple errors reading "impegni1: Cannot perform this operation on a closed dataset." Unfortunately, the main Web site is in Italian only. (The vendor has been contacted about this error, but there has not yet been a response.)

--Jennifer Berger