15-Minute Reviews :: Chronograph v6.20 (Update)

Hello everyone and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Chronograph version 6.20 by AltrixSoft – An application to simplify atomic clock synchronization as well as offers a themed system tray clock replacement.

As since I have reviewed Chronograph v6.0 here this review will be an extension onto that review.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Chronograph is a simple utility that synchronizes your computer’s internal clock to the atomic time. Standard internal clocks are usually very incorrect, and need frequent manual corrections. Chronograph automatically maintains correct time using atomic clock servers of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The program is extremely helpful for every computer user. It is a must have for professionals who need correct time permanently (e.g. stock traders). Chronograph provides a high degree of accuracy – the difference between local computer time and actual time after correction will rarely exceed 0.5 seconds. This slight difference is caused by an unavoidable network transmission delay.”

Quick Pros

• Simple and easy to use interface
• Some good clock replacement themes
• Updated to work better with large font systems and Vista UAC

Quick Cons

• Fairly hefty memory footprint – CPU usage sitting at 15% average now
• Lack of advanced notification options for synchronization

Expansion

There hasn’t been a lot of changes since the version 6.0 I reviewed previously. While Windows itself has atomic clock synchronization built right into it, control over synchronization scheduling as well as it requiring a service in place just to synchronize can make a third-party application a lucrative option. Chronograph offers a simple interface, easy to set up options and a nice replacement system tray clock with themes built-in. Previously I mentioned that the system tray clocks is the lucrative portion of this application moreso for myself. Again, there are a lot of themes that are extremely hard to see even though their digits are two to four times larger than the stock Windows system tray clock.

While previously I mentioned the memory footprint was huge at 14.5MB but CPU usage was below one percent, this time I saw something different. Memory usage is up to 15.4MB, up almost an entire megabyte of memory (Another hefty chunk of memory for those running with only 512MB RAN); However, this time the memory is less of a concern. This application is sitting at 15 percent CPU usage almost steady, with minor fluctuations down to 13 and up to 19 percent occasionally. This is a huge amount of the CPU being used. I thought that maybe something might have been off with my Windows installation, so I installed it on my other system; 9 percent average non-stop. That is almost 20 percent usage of one of my cores. That is a lot of CPU cycles being used. This is an unacceptable level; I don’t know why this is using so much CPU time now.

As mentioned before, advanced notification options are missing; I’d really like to know when my clock is out a certain amount of time, rather than when it is checking to see if I’m out. Either a system pop-up or a sound to let you know.

According to the release news on their site, the major changes with this version are large fonts support as well as Vista User Account Control support as well. While I can’t compare the UAC to the previous version, the large fonts support seems to only mean the application does not have issues under large font systems, rather than supporting large fonts in itself; I saw no difference between running with large fonts or normal; It would have been nice if at least the settings window would have supported large fonts.

Final Verdict

While I previously stated that this application would be good for those who wanted a system tray replacement with better atomic synchronization support (Who have memory to spare should have been noted in that review), I can not this time; Not only has the memory footprint increased another 6 percent, the CPU usage jumping up significantly to performance-affecting levels, I can no longer recommend this application at any level until these issues are rectified.

Posted by BladedThoth on Monday, June 25, 2007