Today v. 2Day
What’s happening today?
This articles considers two of the most popular “today” style organizer utilities for Palm - the imaginatively named “Today” by PocketCraft and “2Day” by ShSh Software - and compares them with the standard functionality of the built-in Palm calendar screen.
Today
2 Day
Today
Today is an older app that has recently been adopted by PocketCraft, known for their Facer launcher. Today used to stand alone, but currently has lots of competition, including the new today screen in the built-in Palm calendar.
Today offers some basic skinability, but you are on your own to create your Today skins, which are not really skins but a combination of icons and background colors/images. Today’s options are limited, and unlike its competitor 2Day, there is no plugin support. Today does have limited status indicator icons showing battery/memory usage.
Preferences allow you to set the order of Date, Calendar, Inbox, Tasks, Owner Info, and System Info, and as with the Palm calendar, 2Day, and Agendus’ today screen, you can prioritize these choices. Unfortunately, there are very few options within each view. I was greatly disappointed in that Calendar doesn’t consider upcoming appointments as “upcoming” if they’re more than a day away. I realize the idea of a today screen is to show me today’s appointments, but part of dealing with today is preparing for tomorrow or the day after, so I like to see what’s coming.
You can set the calendar (hard) button on your Treo (or other Palm device) to go to Today, and you can set each view to launch whichever app you want. Today also gives you limited launcher function allowing you map each hard key from within the Today screen.
2Day
The options with 2Day offer flexibility that makes this application very useful. Like the built-in Palm today screen, 2Day will show you upcoming events. Unlike Today or the Palm today screen, 2Day offers you a choice in how far into your future you want to see. It will show you upcoming events for tomorrow, everything through next week, or anything in between.
Plugins are a big part of 2Day, and more are added as they become available. The nice thing about plugins is that it gives you more options of important information visible on your today screen. Current plugins allow you to see the weather, stock quotes, sports scores, and much more.
The newest version of 2Day includes an alarm (Reminder). You can set the alarm for specific times, or as a countdown from the current time. These alarms seem to be limitless. There is a “lookup” button in the Reminder screen, but I’m not sure what it does, and it causes a soft reset every time I press it. The alarm sounds whatever your default calendar alert is set to play. Today is also fully skinnable with skins easily created using the 2Day skin creation kit.
2Day also allows you to add or remove a calendar event without actually exiting and going into the calendar. It is the only one of these 3 that offers that ability. While Palm’s today screen, and Today are merely front ends to the calendar, 2Day is almost a calendar replacement.
Comparison
As you can see from the table, 2Day is definitely the more robust of the three choices. Today offers some features not found in the built-in calendar screen, but remains weak compared to 2Day.
Related Links
Download 2Day (and skin creation kit)
View more downloads by ShSh software .
Visit the ShSh Software forum for more details about 2Day and other ShSh products.
Filed under: Software reviews
Loading ...
This is very well written review, I love 2Day and highly recommend this app!
From the screenshots, the built-in Calendar is obviously the best as it provides much more information while still limiting the display to one page :-) Other apps to checkout are the Facer launcher, and the calendar replacements, Agendus and Datebk6. I personally love Datebk6’s today view (hopefully soon out of beta) - because it gets the one page summary just as I like it, like the built-in calendar.
BTW, one minor correction: The built-in calendar does support the 5-way - press center, and you will be able to move between tasks/events. Press center again and you will be taken to the task/day view with that event selected. Works very well.
not convinced, there are loads of Free skins for Today and it’s biggest advantage over 2Day is it’s price, FREE!!
I’ve had 2day for about a week and believe it is a much needed improvement to the built in today view. my only gripe is that I wish I could change the plugin fonts to something a bit smaller. I can never read the entire quote of the day without having to choose it.
ghostofcain - I would agree if it weren’t for the fact that Today is no longer FREE. Oh well.
I chose not to include my own favorite, Agendus - or its counterpart DateBook 5/6 - as there is so much more to these applications than just the today screen that it would have been like comparing a Commodore computer to a Dell.
I was using Agendus (which is a very bloated program) with my Treo 600 until I got the 650. The built-in today screen on the 650 is good enough for me. Nice backgrounds, full 5-way, no bloat!
Today, and Build-in Calendar
both have build in calendar integration, specially the “build-in” calendar itself
Today has upcoming events as well.
the “build-in” calendar has 5 way support, i use it every day.
This review is biased towards 2day
The review is biased, but all reviews on these sites are biased in that they have one goal…to promote the purchase of the software. I find these programs are not needed. I handle all my appointments and planning with the built-in software.
I’m confused of whether use 2Day or Agendus.
Could someone help me?
I’ve tried Today and 2day, and used the built in Agenda view for the Palm Calendar.
I ended up purchasing 2day. It can be configured to show all the information that the built in Agenda view has including tasks, time until next appointment etc. The hi res font makes it look great and gets the most information on one screen.
The main reason that I purchased it though is that it is the only one of the three that will show me when I have new email messages through Verizon Wireless Sync.
Bruce
I am demo’ing 2day and my biggest complaint is the inability to allow multiple lines per-calendar entry.
I link with outlook and all my meetings start with “Updated - ” which uses up the first line in “large font” mode. Small fonts work OK but my eyes aren’t as young as they used to be (and multiple lines in small fonts would even show me the location).
2day just makes my treo 600 soft reset!