VueMinder Calendar 50% Discount to Celebrate First Year

[vuesoft]

Hello, I'm Dan Chartrand from VueSoft, creators of VueMinder Calendar. 

VueMinder Calendar has just turned 1 year old!  To celebrate, we're offering a 50% discount for the week of August 23 through August 30.  Instead of the regular price of $39.95, you can get VueMinder Calendar Pro for only $19.95!

To receive this discount, download the Pro version trial and click the 'Buy Now' button within the program.  You can also click here to access the order form with the discount applied.

The first version of VueMinder Calendar Pro (originally simply named VueMinder) was released on Aug 27, 2008.  We've dug through the archives and found a screenshot of the original version:


For comparison, here's an example screenshot using the latest version (5.1.1):


As you can see from the two screenshots, we've been very busy in year since VueMinder was originally released, adding a plethora of new features. Here's a quick recap of the major features that have been added since the first version:
- Email and text message reminders
- Calendar and reminder sharing
- Tasks
- Appearance themes and improved default appearance
- Desktop alert reminder type
- Event list
- Date navigation
- Calendar and event defaults
- Configuration Wizard
- Automatic data backup
- Print layouts
- Mark events as completed
- Automatic completion when reminder is dismissed
- Recent reminder list
- Week numbers
- Customizable event appearances
- Configurable Calendar View settings
- Reduced application load times
- Analog and digital clock display
- Window docking and layout
- Excel import and export
- Outlook import/export and auto sync
- Enhanced tooltips
- Desktop Calendar integrated into Windows desktop
- Event and task categories
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Details area of main window
- Full-featured event description editor

To see the full list, check out the complete version history.

For the most part, these features were all based on the excellent suggestions and feedback we've received from our customers. And we're not done yet! We're hard at work on the next version (5.2), which will add a number of new and improved features and should be released within the next couple of weeks. Looking out a few months, we have even more features planned, such as automatic synchronization with Google Calendar, a note/journal editor, contact lists, and much more. We continue to gather feature suggestions from our customers and make improvements as fast as possible. Our ultimate goal is to provide the most powerful, full-featured, and easiest to use calendar program on the market. In our (admittedly biased!) opinion, we think we're succeeding, but we couldn't do it without the support of our customers!

If you feel powerless to affect the features of calendar programs provided by other bigger companies, don't despair! Give VueMinder Calendar a try, or take advantage of the discount this week. If you find it doesn't provide a feature you'd like, shoot us an email. We promise your voice will be heard, and we'll seriously consider any suggestions you may have. As mentioned above, almost all the features added in the last year have been based on customer suggestions, so you can feel confident that we'll take your feedback seriously. Give us a try!

Best regards,
Dan Chartrand
VueSoft

[LM7]

I recently purchased VueMinder Calendar, and based on my experience with it I recommend it VERY highly. (Just for the record, I am in no way associated with the developer - I'm simply an ordinary end user.)

Anyone who has serious calendaring needs will probably be better off with this program than any other (and I have tested numerous programs of this sort) - and the program is constantly being developed and improved!

The program is very full-featured and also aesthetically beautiful. It's probably the most powerful offline calendar available, yet despite the plethora of features it offers (listed on their website), it's very easy to learn and use.

The developer is EXTRAORDINARILY responsive and is constantly introducing new features at the request of users - and he also corrects bugs very quickly, in addition to implementing user suggestions quite rapidly. Updates of the program are fast and frequent.

In short, if you're interested in an offline calendar, I very strongly suggest taking advantage of this offer - the program is excellent, and the price is truly a bargain.

[superboyac]

Dan, thanks for the discount and writing here at DC.  I think I am one of the few that appreciates a good dedicated calendar program, as most people use Outlook or whatever other larger-scale integrated solution that is out there for managing emails, appointments, and events.  It's been a long time since I've seen a new entry into the dedicated calendar software genre.

I just downloaded the Pro version and it's very nice.  The program i currently use is Calendarscope.  In all of my searches in during the past few years, Calendarscope is the best because it's very fast and lightweight and has a lot of nice options for customizing the calendar.  What I absolutely hate about Calendarscope is their licensing policy.  A license lasts one year only, and spending $40 a year for just a calendar software is a little too much in my opinion.  Furthermore, you have to pay extra for Outlook synchronization and sharing of any type.  But the software itself is pretty good.  The way I look at it is you buy it once and just keep using the old version until you absolutely need the newer features.  Still, I don't like their license policy at all.  I've made a few posts about it here at donationcoder, so if you search for it, you can read more about it.

Now, I can already see that even though your price is the same, I don't think you have the same kind of policy as they do, so that's good.  Let me comment on your software now, even though I've only tried it for a few minutes (I'll have more to say later):

--First, your program is slower than Calendarscope.  That's not really a bad thing, it's just something I thought I'd point out.  You can tell by scrolling and clicking things that the reactions are not as fast.  But that doesn't mean it's slow.  One thing that I always notice about Calendarscope is how fast it is.  Ultimately, your program is fast enough.

--One thing I hate about Calendarscope is that when you hover the mouse over an event to see the details in the popup tooltip, it uses the settings of the regular Windows tooltip settings.  So if you're description and details are long, most of it will get cut off.  Also, it will disappear after a few seconds and there's no option to change it because it's part the Windows system, not Calendarscope.  i asked him to change it once to something custom-programmed for Calendarscope, but he didn't care for the suggestion.  I can see that Vueminder uses its own tooltip/hover/popup feature and it is really nice.  it shows a lot more and looks really good.  And I know you can add features to it because it's part of the program.  Very nice.

--Another thing I don't like about Calendarscope is the Details pane.  It can only be docked on the bottom of the screen.  I like to dock it on the side because there's never much information in the details so putting it on the bottom wastes too much space.  It would be better on the side taking up little space.  In Vueminder, you can dock anything anywhere which is very very nice.  And the details pane looks better.

--One thing I LOVE about Calendarscope is that the days with events in them will be colored nicely in the Navigation Pane according to the event color.  Most program, including Vueminder, will just bold a day with an event.  Having the different color in the Navigation Pane is better, prettier, and stands out more.  If you are open to suggestions, i would recommend this feature.

--Also another recommendation.  I can see that events can be styled in a very flexible manner (two background colors, font, gradient, etc.)  This is nice.  However, it would be even better if event categories themselves could be defined with a default style.  For example, all Birthday's could have custom-defined fonts, colors, icons, etc.  This way, when we select a category for an event, the visual styles will automatically be applied.  This is how Calendarscope does it and it is very nice.


I probably have more suggestions, but that's enough for now.  Overall, Vueminder seems to be a fantastic calendar program.  In many ways it is already superior to Calendarscope.  I thank you for your efforts.

Aram

[Bionic71]

happy birthday 
so is there now a yearly fee for upgrades?
or does this celebration include previously used settlement for lifetime?

[vuesoft]

--One thing I LOVE about Calendarscope is that the days with events in them will be colored nicely in the Navigation Pane according to the event color.  Most program, including Vueminder, will just bold a day with an event.  Having the different color in the Navigation Pane is better, prettier, and stands out more.  If you are open to suggestions, i would recommend this feature.

-superboyac (August 24, 2009, 12:06 AM)

Thank you for the suggestion!  I'll investigate to see if there's a way this could be accomplished.

--Also another recommendation.  I can see that events can be styled in a very flexible manner (two background colors, font, gradient, etc.)  This is nice.  However, it would be even better if event categories themselves could be defined with a default style.  For example, all Birthday's could have custom-defined fonts, colors, icons, etc.  This way, when we select a category for an event, the visual styles will automatically be applied.  This is how Calendarscope does it and it is very nice.

-superboyac (August 24, 2009, 12:06 AM)

Currently, event appearances will default to match the appearance that has been configured for the owning calendar. However, I believe allowing the appearance to default to be based on the selected category would be a good addition. This feature will be added in the near future - maybe not the next release but very soon.  Thanks for the suggestion!

happy birthday 
so is there now a yearly fee for upgrades?
or does this celebration include previously used settlement for lifetime?

-Bionic71 (August 24, 2009, 06:35 AM)

When a license is purchased, you can receive free product updates and priority support for 1 year after the purchase date, including any new major releases. You can also use the program for as long as you'd like - the license itself never expires. After the first year, you can renew a service contract to continue receiving product updates and priority support for another year. The cost of renewing the service contract is $19.95, or half what a new license would cost. I believe this is fair, considering how often product updates are released and how much emphasis is placed on providing top-quality customer support.

[Rhutobello]

I don't know if you are using McAfee site advisor, but I will give you a notice on how this service rate your site; (All red since graph can't be posted)

Online affiliations for vuesoftsite.com:
Link Graph

Linked to red sites

When we tested this site we found links to softwarelode.com, which we found to be a distributor of downloads some people consider adware, spyware or other potentially unwanted programs.
_______________
Even if your downloads was tested to be clean, I think many will be put off because of all the red links.
I can understand your frustration,because I assume this is sites that just host your files, but at the same time I value McAfee because if we deny sites that aren't clean to host our files, we take away their creditability, and they have the choice to become straight or just be rouge sites.

[vuesoft]

I am aware of this.  The links in question were removed months ago, along with almost every other external link (just in case).  I've request McAfee retest my site, and they claim it has been added to their queue.  However, that was a month ago, and nothing has happened yet.  I've informed McAfee that they're driving away my potential customers, but the canned response I received basically said "so what?".  Unless you're a Fortune 500 company with a team of lawyers, or can afford to put McAfee's "Secure" badge on your website, you're pretty much at the mercy of McAfee.

The last time they tested my site was at the beginning of February.  Who knows how long it will take for them to retest again? In my opinion, SiteAdvisor is more about making money for McAfee than it is about actually protecting people from malicious websites.  For example, someone that has a "green" site could add a virus-laden file for download.  It might be months before SiteAdvisor catches up to the content of the site.  In the meantime, everyone using SiteAdvisor sees the site is green and thinks it's safe.  And in my case, there were a few links to other websites that may or may not have had dangerous content (not my own!).  Those links were removed months ago, but my site is still flagged red even though there's nothing dangerous on my site, and the only dangerous thing that was there previously were LINKS to other sites.

In any case, I've done everything I can to fix this, but it's up to McAfee to retest my site, and they're in no hurry to do so.

[cyberdiva]

FWIW, I decided not to use SiteAdvisor quite a while ago for exactly this reason--the time lag in making needed changes was/is so long that it renders the judgments all but useless.  

[Rhutobello]

Agree....that is not a good policy at all....it should almost be a higher priority to remove red links then to put up new ones, because if one show action to improve, then that is of greater value, over all, then to find new, because new sites are grey and, we can use common sense, when visit.

If words go around that they are slow to adjust, then they hit themselves in the back, because people can't trust them anymore.....doubt is always a way to be defeated.