Free Desktop Clock 2.2 - Freeware Windows Tray Clock Replacement

Free Desktop Clock 2.2 – Freeware Windows Tray Clock Replacement

by Mike 7 March 2009 13 Comments

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Overview
Free Desktop Clock is a better looking and more advanced freeware replacement for the standard Windows system tray clock.

Review
I had only one reason to search for a freeware tray clock replacement: I want the date dispayed too, not only the time. And maybe I hoped for a better looking clock, but that was not essential. After browsing the internet for some time I was quite frustrated because almost all the programs in this category are shareware, mostly time limited. Finally I found Free Desktop Clock. It has a paid version called Atomic Alarm Clock, with far more features, but I hope that the free version will be enough for my needs.

Nice, it shows the date, 7th of March, Saturday. You can set it to show the seconds too along with the hours and minutes. As for the looks you get to choose from 50 different skins. Some of the skins look quite atrocius, others are nice. I chose the domino skin, nice and elegant black and white skin.

If you wonder about the memory footprint I can tell you that it’s rather small, only 560 Kb on my system. In the main window of the program you can make a few customizations to the program, and you can also synchronize your clocki with the international time servers like time.windows.com and others. By default if you double click the tray clock the Windows Date and Time Properties window will pop up. I use this window as a calendar

There you have it, a freeware tray clock replacement with better looks and a small memory footprint.

Version Tested

2.2

Author

Drive Software

Operating System

Windows NT, 2000, XP, 2003

Download link

Summary

Nice skins and good functionality.

Small memory footprint.

Does not work on Windows Vista.

It could have included more features from the commercial version.

Rating

Verdict

I’m still on the lookout for a great freeware tray clock replacement, but until I find the one that I’m dreaming of Free Desktop Clock does the job quite well.

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13 Comments »

CodyPT said:

You ought to take a look at TClockEx (http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,6122-order,1-page,1-c,alldownloads/description.html)

A free, versatile program with a small footprint that offers a better display of the date and time than your choice…at least in my opinion.

# 7 March 2009 at 2:33 pm

Johnny Karp said:

@Cody
I didn’t know about TClockEx, thanks for pointing it out to me. I’ll give it a try, it looks promising.

# 7 March 2009 at 3:51 pm

Dusan said:

You may try ‘TClock Lite’
http://homepage1.nifty.com/kazubon/tclocklight/index.html

# 8 March 2009 at 1:58 am

Sparx said:

Also have a look at TClock2, although it seems to suffer from similar cons – no vista support. But there is support for time synchronization so your clock can be accurately maintained thanks to time servers on the Net. Also has support for skinning the START button.

# 8 March 2009 at 11:08 am

Sparx said:

Another alternative is Analog Clock, it is now freeware and is apparently Vista compatible. There is however no more support from the author. This application too can keep your system time synced with NTP servers.

# 8 March 2009 at 11:13 am

Johnny Karp said:

@Dusan
I tried TClock lite some time ago and unless there’s a newer version available I wouldn’t do that again, it didn’t impress me at all.

# 8 March 2009 at 1:17 pm

Johnny Karp said:

@Sparx
Thanks a lot for your suggestions, I’ll have a look.

# 8 March 2009 at 1:18 pm

Russell said:

I don’t understand … If trying to build a wholly freeware PC, why all this stuff about applications that run in Windows? Why not ditch Windows and get a free copy or download of Linux?

Good luck with the project nonetheless!

# 10 March 2009 at 12:34 am

Johnny Karp said:

@Russell
I have a dual boot system now, I installed Ubuntu… With all due respect, it isn’t developed enough to replace Windows, mainly because of the hardware support problems. I would love to ditch Windows but for now I feel it’s impossible.

# 11 March 2009 at 9:51 am

Dusan said:

Mate I suggest you try LINUX MINT ,
you can even Install-uninstall from windows and test or use it standalone.

It is based on Ubuntu but much beter OS

# 13 March 2009 at 12:02 am

Johnny Karp said:

@Dusan
Thanks for the suggestion. As a matter of fact I planned to give it a go sooner or later because many people told me good things about it.

# 13 March 2009 at 12:24 am

Dusan said:

No problem mate,
All my hardware worked perfect withot installing any aditional drivers,
exept drivers for my wirelles card ( 1minute job).
http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
All working good, videos, audio files … and you can automaticly install aplications
http://linuxmint.com/software/?sec=categories&release=4

# 13 March 2009 at 2:06 am