I used to switch between KDE's Kontact and GNOME's Evolution. But it's been a long time since I've looked back at the latter. I finally settled on Kontact to keep me in touch with the reality of my hectic daily schedule. See how you can keep up...

Here's a typical day for me. I get off my so-called day job at Midnight, so we'll start there. Hopefully I have a story to publish here when I get home. Otherwise I'm up till 2 or 3 in the morning. I sleep till around 8 or 9 AM, when the dog just has to go out. I doze off again till around 10:30. Then I'm back at playing journalist until 2:00 PM. That's when I start getting ready for work. Mind you, some days I have to run errands, meet people, or go into work early, where I play company coordinator for a regional environmental improvement program. Then I keep my clients safe and sound from 4:00 PM until Midnight. Oh yeah, and I run a veggie garden in the Summer months.

And did I mention being the chairman of our local Linux User Group? So how do I keep up with everything? Truth is, sometimes I don't. But without Kontact, I would be lost. The key feature of Kontact that is most useful is actually the Summary page. As soon as I launch Kontact, I see all my daily challenges in one place, right along with the news and weather. I know what the temperature is in the UK, Germany, and 3 US cities. I know how many e-mails are waiting for me - and from which accounts. And I can even see the upcoming appointments, active tasks and whether my anniversary - or Ma's birthday - is about to catch me by surprise.

By comparison, Evolution doesn't have RSS feeds - or even a Summary page - though it did at one time. For some reason, the developers got a burr, and removed it. They also never really got around to adding the ability to store mail on a POP server for n number of days into the main branch of the program. Kontact lets you do that and more.

From there, it's a single click to any given tool - the calendar, address book, e-mail & newsgroups, news reader, task list and journal. Incidentally, each of these is really a stand-alone application that the KDE team has managed to integrate nicely into a single tool. And you can change configuration options, either for the tool you're using now, or for any part of Kontact, right from the Settings menu. Oh that integrated applications could work so well together! The tool I use the most is e-mail, so let's talk about that first.

KMail is the actual application, and it supports POP and IMAP servers. Be sure you choose the Disconnected IMAP type if you are trying to setup a remote IMAP connection. I typically setup my ISP mail as a POP account, but my webhosting service mail as Disconnected IMAP. You can layout the folder and message view a couple of different ways. On my laptop I just use the traditional folder list on the left side, and the message list over the top of the message pane. You can place the message list next to the message pane, but it's not as clean as Outlook's version - at least, not in my laptop, it isn't.

The Address Book let's you see the contact list in one pane, and the details in another pane. But you can also open the Contact editor or Distribution List editor right under the contact list. And you can import contacts via LDIF, CSV, and half a dozen other file formats, too. Using the Settings menu, you can turn on the Alphabetical Jump Bar, the Contact Editor, and Distribution List editors. By Going to View-->Modify View, you can setup which fields are visibile in the main list, the look and feel, and even whether to enable a background image for the contact list.

In the Calendar, you simply select an event in the calendar pane, to see the event details listed in the Details pane. Add the tasklist - or hide it - if you choose. Do you really want to know what's next? O.k., if you insist! Simply click the What's Next icon in the Calendar toolbar to get a detailed view of what's coming at you. The only thing missing seems to be the annual view. The To-Do list let's you see your whole list of tasks. And you can click that What's Next icon and return back to the Calendar view. The Journal takes you to the Calendar view, as well, only you see links to add Journal entries, instead of the calendar.

Need a place to keep your nots? No sweat. Little yellow sticky notes, at your service. You don't get much control over your notes, so you can change the color of the text, but not of the note itself. And, of course, everyone needs to keep up with what's going on in the world. Akregator is there to keep you informed and up-to-date. Simply right-click on the All Feeds folder and create a new feed or folder for feeds. Bear in mind that these feeds are different from the ones maintained in your Summary view, and must be configured separately. So put the critical news feeds into your summary view, and the rest in Akregator.

Being able to change sticky note colors, allowing the message list to be displayed below the folder list and allowing a background image on the Calendar would all be pretty cool to see. Otherwise, Kontact is one of the best PIM's I've seen. I even prefer it to Outlook, which I use to prefer over the GNU/Linux tools in the past. Oh, there's much more to Kontact than what I've discussed here, but my clock says it's time to hit sleep mode for a few hours. You can learn more about Kontact from their website.