Sunday, August 15, 2010

SOFTWARE: The Little Clock That Is Just A Clock

I was a bit wrong the day before yesterday when I mentioned Everything was the first icon to the right of my system tray. While not an icon, TClockEx actually holds the right-most position in my system tray and is probably the longest-serving auto-start program in my tray.

You can find TClockEx here (as adverse the site listed in the About screen). It's by Dale Nurden and is now 10 years old. Unchanged and still working after 10 years. I wish MY software would last a tenth as long!

What is TClockEx? It is a extended clock for your system tray. It'll do a slight bit more than that (show your memory consumption as a bar graph), but I honestly just use it for the one purpose. Instead of a non-descript 1:10 PM, it shows me [Sun] 15/Aug/2010 @ 1:11:35 PM. In yellow type against a black background. Easy to see against the dark blue desktop and grey taskbar to its left. Doesn't sound very dynamic does it?

Yet it is one of the first half-dozen programs I install on any new computer.

By the way, this works in Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Frankly, it's not needed in Windows 7. What about Vista, you ask? Ahhhh, we don't say that word in polite company and if you're smart enough to be reading this blog, you don't care a whit about the Microsoft Mistake.

Anyways .... I believe in single-purpose tools as much as possible. Do one thing and do it well. And TClockEx is a superb clock. I WILL admit I like its little calendar popup when you double-click it (user configurable). But being a clock is really what I need it to do and it does that. AND it's free, although Dale accepts donations through PayPal.

It's not the most earth-shattering software ever invented. But there IS beauty in simplicity. Doesn't take much RAM and it improves on Windows XP. Give it a try.

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