Mama Says…

I had three calendars on go – a large book calendar, a wall calendar beside the computer desk and another one in the kitchen – and I still managed to space out on appointments and birthdays from time to time. My husband Dave bugged me to amalgamate them into one calendar – a great idea, but I couldn’t find a calendar I liked that incorporated everything I wanted it to.

That all changed when I heard about Cozi Central, a computer-based family calendar and message centre all in one with several very cool perks included. As soon as I got word that I’d been chosen to review the Cozi system, I downloaded the free software – that’s right, I said FREE, baby! – and got started.

There’s so much that I like about this system that I’m going to take the easy way out and do this up bullet-style. So, without any further ado, here’s what grabs about Cozi Central:

• The layout: On the home page, the calendar is big and clearly visible and so is the message centre below it.

• There’s an area on the left-hand side of the page to personalize it with a picture and in the bottom right-hand corner is a clock that’s big enough for me to see, which is something I noticed immediately as I’m as blind as a bat and have a hard time seeing the teensy weensy clock in the corner of the Windows toolbar.

• Within the calendar, each member of the family is assigned a different colour, so their appointments and events are easily discernable – at a glance I can tell what’s showing up for who just by the colour.

• The message centre: I can type whatever I want into the message box – notes to myself or Dave, grocery lists, reminders – and send them to either myself or him via email or our cell phones (and lemmie tell ya, when I realize that I’ve forgotten to tell Dave that we need sugar and he’s already left for the grocery store, that feature comes quite in handy).

• I also really like how easy it is to make lists within the program. I rely heavily on lists and I currently have several written within Cozi. Having all of my lists together in the same place is really helpful and makes life a lot easier.

• The screensaver: This is, by far, the coolest screensaver I have ever seen. With the click of a button I was able to set the screensaver to display all of the pictures we’ve got on our computer. We’d run into problems with another photo-based screensaver and had to stop using it, so being able to see pictures of my family and friends pop up on the screen again was something I found very cool.

• What’s neat about the screensaver is the layout – instead of showing one picture at a time, Cozi displays a collage of about five or six pictures. It’s really cool and, in my opinion, one of the best features of the entire program.

• Another feature I really like about the screensaver is that the clock also shows up all nice and big, so I can always see what time it is.

• The accessibility: Cozi is accessible from the computer, cell phones and the Web, which is just awesome. Dave can access the calendar from work to add or check on things, a feature that makes life a whole lot easier for both of us. We both feel like we’re on the same page, and having our family calendar available in so many different ways meant I was able to ditch the three useless calendars I was using and manage our lives strictly with Cozi.

Another tidbit that’s worth mentioning is the quick response time from the Cozi team. Through “Send Feedback” link on the home page, Dave contacted the team with a concern and had a personal response via email within a few hours, something that I found rather impressive.

And now on to what I didn’t like – only one thing, in fact. More often than not, when I open the program on my computer it completely freezes up for several minutes. It always ends up kicking in, but it locks everything else up on my computer until it does, which is annoying.

Mama Says: I highly recommend trying Cozi out – it’s free and even if it doesn’t work for you and your family, I betcha any money you’ll like the screensaver.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 4:53 am and is filed under Organization.
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