Allen -
I actually like talking about this topic way more than rehashing topics like dither, jitter or the loudness war one millionth more time!!
My solutions currently are:
Calendar: Mozilla Sunbird - free, syncable, cross platform, nice interface, definitely recommended -
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/Accounting: Intuit Quick Books Pro - definitely is easier to use and more full featured than my previous solution (Acclaim Cashbook), I really like that processing and logging credit card payments is handled directly by it, as well as emailing of invoicing. But there's definitely some work flow issues with it I don't like that never seem to get changed in the updates (i.e. I really wish there was a button on each invoice that took you directly to the customers contact info rather than having to look up both these things from separate windows), and I run it on a pretty old spare PC so sometimes it boots up a tiny bit slower than I would like (guess this will get fixed when I do my next DAW update and re-purpose my slowest oldest DAW into a new faster office computer). The other thing is that if you use their credit card and emailing services they kind of force you to update after a bit at high cost (i.e. I purchased in 2007 and had to buy the 2010 upgrade at around $150 in order to be able to continue to use these services). The other caveat is that I use it on a WinXP box and there are reports by many that the Mac version doesn't work as well (although I have no first hand experience with this so take it with a grain of salt).
CD label design and printing software: absolutely the best and easiest solution I've found for this is Magic Mouse's Discus - cross platform, ultra easy to learn, very fast to create labels with, very reasonably priced, with built in templates for pretty much absolutely every label type and CD printer out there.
http://www.magicmouse.com/h_discus_detail.htmlcuesheet forwarding: PC only but the freeware pdf print driver
http://www.dopdf.com/ works great and allows you to create pdf's from any printable document - which works a lot better than trying to send other tabbed document formats when sending these things to clients over the net
file delivery: after dealing for a few years with the frustrations of sending FTP instructions to clients and constantly having to create passwords for their uploads I've been happier with a YouSendIt Pro subscription, and really like their included YouSendIt Express ftp client as well. To get rid of my own upload time and hassle though I just received a Synology DS211+ NAS server -
http://www.synology.com/enu/products/DS211+/index.php - which I am going to set up as an FTP server able to deal with my dynamic IP address in the next few days. I was contemplating getting a MacMini and Rumpus for this chore but this was cheaper, was highly recommended by a friend who does some IT, and seems to offer integration with my existing setup a little easier. Initial plan is to just put files for clients download on it - but if that goes well I'll see about clients uploading directly to it (and probably won't do this but it could also possibly host my website as well). I'll let folks know how it works out after it's setup.
Best regards,
Steve Berson