Solution: use Now Up to Date. It's more robust, has views that don't resemble a barbershop appointment book, is networkable across the internet (with read AND write capabilities) and has stood the test of time. It might not be as pretty as iCal, but you know what? It just works. And it doesn't bend over backwards to impress me (and fail miserably.) It just works. Which is what I want my scheduler to do.

If not, look into Palm Desktop (free) or even MS Entourage.

But for all that is good and holy, if you are serious in your business enough to actually be considered an important ingredient of a pre-scheduled conference call, do not rely on iCal.