CalPrint for iPhone Review

For productivity and organization junkies, this is the perfect App for sharing and printing your Calendars, anywhere, straight from your iPhone. For my review of CalPrint, I'll first look at its usefulness as a Calendar App and then describe the printing feature, which is the highlight of this app from EuroSmartz, Ltd.

At first, you may notice that CalPrint has a similar look and feel to the built-in Calendar App with iOS4 -- a basic layout with several views. My favorite is Month View, but with this App you'll find it different than the built-in Calendar App as it actually shows your events on the dates instead of just a marker for events with descriptions below. This is a common theme in third party calendar Apps, as most people want to see the information about their upcoming events all at once within this view. This is a greatly appreciated change from the built-in App. Another feature that I always enjoy is how one can navigate in this view to the next month. More and more Calendar Apps are offering side-swiping for this, and CalPrint is no exception. A fantastic idea for ease of use, and a definite plus over the regular Calendar (which I find out be a little cumbersome to navigate sometimes).

The Day View gives you a basic hour-by-hour layout similar to the iOS Calendar App, but also has the side-swiping feature of going from day to day along your schedule. CalPrint also has what they call 'week view' which allows you to basically see several these hour-by-hour day schedules at once, in a week-long format. You can also zoom in & out to get fewer or more days (up to 7) in this view. It's an interesting addition, and while I still prefer Month View, I'm sure someone will have this as a favorite too.

The final view is List, and here we have something a bit special as well. Instead of listing basically all of your upcoming events, you can customize which events this list shows. Your options are by date ranges, and offer quick-taps for lists like 'next week' or 'this month' or you can custom build a list from specified dates. Really fantastic if you simply want your schedule while you're on vacation, or on a business trip, or something else of that nature.

Now that you're familiar with viewing your calendar, let me quickly go over editing. It's fairly simple. In every view you have the same top-bar that offers three choices - Edit/Add Events, Email Calendar and Print. Obviously to add events you'll want the first option, and adding events is as simple as filling out the same details as you would in the built-in Calendar App. Just make sure that you've selected the proper date, as it won't auto-select the date, even in Day view.

If you have a Wifi Printer and your iPhone is on the same network, the App should automatically detect and be able to print just fine. If you don't have a Wifi Printer but still have your printer shared on your network you'll have to download the WePrint Software (don't worry, it's free!) to manage the printers. One final trick is that using this software you'll actually be able to print from your iPhone regardless of the network. This allows you to print something via Wifi or even 3G someplace else. You can find these settings within the WePrint's Print via Proxy preferences. The other built-in sharing option is via email; you can email a PDF document to yourself, or anyone else, which is convenient for printing later.

Sadly, while this App is very functional and absolutely useful, it does have a couple design flaws. First and foremost is the fact that it does not show multi-day 'All Day' events over the course of each day. It only shows up on the day that it begins. Secondly, I did mention earlier that even in Day View you'll have to manually enter in which day you'll want to add your event too - not a big deal, but still a bit bothersome. And while the Email via PDF is a fantastic feature, sadly my PDF was blank.

Finally I do want to note the extensive support and help that EuroSmartz offers on their website. Not only a full support document section, but also how-to videos on setting up and using the WePrint software.

While there are some drawbacks, this is still a great App to have around. It's useful and simple. While you might not find it to be the perfect app for customizing or using as an everyday Calendar App, it's definitely perfect for viewing and quickly editing when need be, and you'll be able to print and share your calendars from anywhere. If you're a calendar junkie, and even if you're not, I highly suggest checking it out.

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