News :: 15MR: Chronograph v6.0
Hello all and wlecome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Chronograph version 6.0 by AltrixSoft—An application which to simplify synchronisation and offers themed system clock replacement.
As Giveaway of the Day states:
“With Chronograph you will never have to adjust your computer’s clock or look for the exact current time and date in the Internet. Chronograph will do it for you automatically and keep your clock accurate.
Chronograph’s main function is to synchronize your local PC time using the Internet. For that purpose it uses the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Atomic Clock time servers. Chronograph provides quite a high degree of accuracy and the difference between local computer time and atomic clock time after correction will rarely exceed 0.5 second. This slight difference is caused by an unavoidable network transmission delay.
Chronograph has an easy-to-use, nice-looking interface. It also offers many useful features which make the time synchronization process fast and easy.
Quick Pros
- Simple and easy to use interface
- Some good clock replacement themes
- Low CPU usage
Quick Cons
- Fairly hefty memory footprint
- Lack of advanced notification options for synchronization
Expansion
While this application seems to be something that freeware or Windows built-in can do, it does seem to do it more eloquently than other alternatives. The interface looks great, the ability to set up a timer for synchronization is also nice; Top this off with the ability to synchronize every start, and there is a decent amount of options for synchronization.
What does make this lucrative is the replacement tray clock option. While a lot of the themes are difficult at best to read, there are some that are easy to see, easier than the stock Windows tray clock. While the CPU usage is negligible (<1%), the memory footprint is fairly hefty at 14.5 megabytes. This may not seem like much for some, but for those sitting on a system still using 512MB, this would be a lot.
A few things that I hope to see in a future release that is missing is events such as task tray popup notification if there is an update of over ‘x’ amount or a sound notification for larger than a certain amount of time correction. There could be more features, but its simplicity is this application’s core.
Final Verdict
If you want a little more control over your atomic synchronization, and don’t like how the tray clock looks, this application makes a great freebie. It’s clean, simple, and appears bug-free. While I’m not sure if its worth $19.95, I would likely purchase this application for the tray clock replacement first, and synchronization as a nice add-on for myself. I am just greatful that Giveaway of the Day gave this to me for free and made it so that I didn’t have to make the choice of worth; It is definitely worth it as free.
Posted by BladedThoth on Sunday, March 11, 2007
