KDE Kontact 1.2.3 review

Kontact Personal Information Management suite unites mature and proven KDE applicati

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 12606K Developer: Don Sanders

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Kontact Personal Information Management suite unites mature and proven KDE applications (called components in the context) under one roof. Thanks to the powerful KParts technology, all components are seamlessly integrated into one application.

The components of KDE Kontact are all shaped to work nice with each other. This results in features like intuitive drag 'n' dropping between components and appointment handling, task lists and contacts.

KDE Kontact also extends its components with support for various groupware servers. When using these servers your workgroup will have access to features like shared email folders, group task lists, calendar sharing, central addressbooks and meeting scheduling.

In short: KDE Kontact delivers innovations to help you manage your communications more easily, organize your work faster and work together more closely, resulting in more productivity and efficiency in digital collaboration.

Here are some key features of "KDE Kontact":
The Summary Component

This component is specially made for KDE Kontact. It provides both an overview of the other components and a selection of information gathered from the internet like weather info and headlines. In fact any RDF news feed can be added.

The Mail Component

The mail component is provided by KMail, the KDE mail client -- a straight forward mail client that comes with all features you would expect.

The Calendar Component

It is quite obvious that KOrganizer, again very mature KDE application, gets used as the calendar component. This feature-rich program is so easy to use and intuitive that you will quickly adopt it as your personal organizer. Extended with groupware functionality it can boost the communication within every workgroup.

The Contacts Component

As the name implies: this component manages your valued contacts. The application providing this component is KAddressbook, a program that is deeply rooted into KDE. It was integrated in KMail and KOrganizer even before the KDE Kontact project was started

The Notes Component

This component serves as your infinite block of digital sticky notes. Your can stick them on your desktop and they say visible even after closing KDE Kontact.

The News Component

This straight forward, full-featured news reader is provided by KNode, KDE's default news reader.

The Sync Component

KitchenSync, KDE's universal syncing application provides a framework for syncing with all kinds of devices. On one side it will have a plugin based interface with your mobile devices, like: PDA's and smart phones. On the other side it has conduits for connecting with other KDE Kontact components and external applications. The Sync component, provided by KitchenSync, is currently being implemented, therefore KitchenSync is not yet considered to be stable. Till the day that KitchenSync takes over we have two very nice applications that seamlessly integrate with KDE Kontact: KPilot for syncing with Palm compatible devices and Kandy for syncing with several mobile phone types. Eventually, KitchenSync will become a universal syncing framework.