I’m generally not a big fan of the Microsoft way of life. That said, I’ve been a loyal user of Outlook for years; mainly because there just isn’t any particularly strong competition out there. (And, yes, I have tried very hard to get funky with Zimbra.)

Over the last month or so I’ve been — cautiously — deploying an Outlook 2007 solution for a local non-profit with some pretty intense calendaring needs. Cautious because, though Outlook/Exchange will definitely get them the most bang for their buck, the sophisticated group collaboration functionality does get to be complex. And by “sophisticated” I mean, of course, “quirky”. And we’re dealing with folks who still store all their data on 3.5″ floppies. Quirky and technophobia do not make a good combination.

Anyway, as the nervous floppy-ites have become increasingly comfortable tabbing through public folder calendars, we’ve had a number of challenging requests crop up. One was to print multiple calendars side-by-side. Quite the reasonable request.

So reasonable, in fact, I was sure it was impossible.

You can imagine my surprise when today I happened across the new, free Calendar Printing Assistant. While many Microsoft apps seem to have just enough functionality to make you wish they, say, worked well, this little utility appears to actually deliver. And now we’re happily lasering five separate calendars to a single, perfectly printed sheet of A4.

Maybe I’m a fan afterall.