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The calendar is just plain useless.
   technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Play's 'Gizmos' are fun, but the calendar is dumb, dumb, dumb


April 30, 2000

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, The Syracuse Newspapers

   Life is tough enough. Computers should be pleasant to use. So it's not surprising that a software company with the name of "Play Inc." would add a little fun to your life.
   And it does. Play has a fantastic collection of frills for Windows called "Gizmos," and with one exception they are ideal for getting away from that boring world of word processing and all that other stuff that puts you to sleep at the keyboard.
   The exception is a mystery. I asked the helpful folks at Play Inc. to explain the mystery -- a calendar that is all but useless -- but they couldn't, so I'll just have to share my puzzlement with you. I'll get to that after I tell you about all the great things Gizmos has.
   First, Gizmos, which lists for $50, is a collection of programs for Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows 2000. There's no Macintosh version and no Linux version. (Mac and Linux users have their own fun programs, but I'd love to see Gizmos for those two platforms.)
   You get some games and beautiful screen savers. You get some great-looking clocks and calculators. You'll find a couple of programs for the Nervous Nellies in the crowd. One lets you "shred" files so that nobody can undelete them and the other gives you a way to store files in a "vault" so that nobody else can ever see them without a password.
   You also get a CD player that looks for artist information on the Internet, a photo organizer that shows thumbnails and full-size view of all your digital images, a slide-show creator and a few other things.
   And, ahem, you get the most incredible calendar ever. It's incredible for two reasons: You can customize it with photos and appearances to make it look just like the most common real calendars at the office or home, and it is totally useless.
   Don't misunderstand. I'm not just saying the calendar in Gizmos is bad or flawed or dumb. It's all those things. But worst of all it is just plain useless. You cannot enter a recurring date in the calendar.
   You can't. No can do. Period.
   I talked to the folks who do public relations for Play Inc. and got nowhere. I talked to the folks who handle customer support and got nowhere. I was told that's how the calendar works. So forget about entering your birthday or your mom's weekly appointment with the physical therapist or your sister's wedding anniversary or your monthly user group meeting. No way. The calendar in Gizmos has no idea what to do with recurring events.
   I have never seen a calendar so bad. What's dismaying is that the calendar, in its many forms, is beautifully designed otherwise.
   Picture Explorer, which searches your folders and then creates thumbnails of all the images it recognizes, is a good way to get acquainted with image cataloging software. I prefer Compupic, which is available for Windows, the Mac and Linux, but you'd probably find Picture Explorer fun.
   Vault and Shredder, which hide or eliminate files, worked well. The games were OK. (I'm not a game player, but I can tell a good one from a bad one. The ones in Gizmos are good.)
   Gizmos has "atomic clocks," which pick up the right time from computers called "time servers" on the Internet. The clocks themselves are graphically stunning, but they never worked right on my Windows 2000 computer or my wife's Windows 98 system. (They did not update the computer's actual clock when they got the right time.) Setting your computer's clock from a time server is a no-brainer, so skip the Gizmo clocks and use a time-setting program instead. (My favorite is Tardis 2000, which you can download from http://www.kaska.demon.co.uk/tardis.htm.)
   Overall, Gizmos is fun, but I wish Play Inc. had spent more time on how things work. A calendar that won't let you enter a weekly appointment for a full year without putting in 52 separate entries is dumber than any of those "Windows for Dummies" computer books. But the fun quotient is high enough for good entertainment.