Do you ever get annoyed by the clock in the system tray of Windows? I do. Because it only shows the time in hour/minute format. I want to see the day of the week, full date including the year…heck, I even want to see the seconds. You can’t do that in Windows. That’s why I use BetaClock. You can do all this with BetaClock and more. Best of all, it’s free.
Let me tell you the story of what I went through before finding BetaClock. I actually searched rather intensely for over a week to find the perfect system tray clock replacement. Yes, I know what you’re thinking and I don’t care, that’s just the kind of person I am. The problem I had with most software I ran into was that it wasn’t just a clock replacement, but did a whole bunch of other unnecessary things like alarm clocks, reminder notes, skins, scheduler, etc. I don’t like that. I just wanted a simple clock replacement that’s customizeable and lightweight. So I BetaClock was finally recommended to me and it was perfect. I could get the date to look exactly like I wanted (see picture up top). Furthermore, it has a customizeable pop-up mini-calendar that can be tweaked to look any way you’d like. My setup is below:
BetaClock has a boatload of options also. You can tweak every little thing, including the number of pixels around the margin of the clock. It’s ridiculous. See the options window below:
Now, here are a couple of very interesting tidbits about this program. I think it’s funny how such a little, trivial program has so many things to talk about! Ok, first, the official website is the most minimalist thing you’ll ever see. It’s basically just a link to download the program. But it’s the official site, I promise you, see below:
Now, I don’t know the whole story, but here is what I’ve been able to piece together. The program used to be called “AlfaClock” and it was free just like this version. But there was some confusion because there’s another program called “AlfaClock2″ which is almost exactly like it in every way. Well, AlfaClock not only has a free version, but a commercial version also. That’s weird, right? It turns out that AlfaClock2 is a ripoff of AlfaClock, which is why the author changed the name to BetaClock to avoid some confusion. I got this information from the related DonationCoder topic (courtesy of LuckMan212):
be careful,
I have been told by the original owner of Alfaclock that the www.alfasoftweb.com site is a rip-off and the Alfaclock2 they are selling is an illegal copy that is based on old beta code. Only use www.alfaclock.com or www.betaclock.com. BetaClock is the latest incarnation but I am currently using Alfaclock Free v1.90 and find it completely stable.
Quite fascinating! OK, here’s nugget #2: if you look closely at my clock setup, you’ll see the time is shown in a different color and slightly larger than the date. I noticed this on the screenshot that used to be on the author’s website. I could never figure out how he did it! So I emailed him and he told me how. What you have to do is create two separate clocks in the setting window by clicking the “Multiple Clock Mode” button. Then you can tweak to your heart’s content. See the picture below:
So there’s the epic story of BetaClock! I swear, nothing makes me feel like more of a nerd than how much time I spent on this clock replacement.
I like betaclock as well. You mentioned in your review that you contacted the author and he actually replied. Did the author indicate ever updating the program for better Vista compatibility or completely release from beta?
Jon:
When I contacted the author, it was a long time ago (over 2 years ago). I have no idea about Vista compatibility. I don’t see any contact information on his website anymore, and I can’t find the address I used before. I guess all we can do is hope he keeps it updated!
Hi Aram, I came across one of your old posts on DonationCoder. I am looking for a way to use my PC at work to dial numbers to customers. We currently have some “shortcuts” to dial that still take 5-6 phone buttons, I am about to put a modem in my work PC and I want to run the phone through the modem to dial, I just don’t know what software to use to be able to dial for the phone. It seems like you’re doing it, any advice? Right now to dial out you have to hit 9, 1, wait for a voice to ask you your dial out password, then dial the full number out. Thanks for any pointers – Jason
At home, I use Handy Addressbook. It’s phone dialer is the easiest to use for me, for a couple of subtle reasons. Try it out. At work, our phone system is on ethernet or something weird like that, so a dialer won’t work. It actually sucks. It’s a crappy phone system even though they probably think it’s sophisticated. Anyway…
For use in business, I would still try out Handy. If you want to integrate business card scanning, with automatic text recognition capabilities, I highly recommend buying a Cardscan system. The addressbook software that comes with it is really good. But I’ve never been able to try the dialer on it. I doubt it’s as good as Handy’s.
There’s another standalone software that i remember having some cool dialing features, but I can’t remember what it was. Darn!! This is going to bug me…
What Journal software did you end up using and why that one?
Thanks!
http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=8528.0
I actually never ended up using a journal software. I think I was feeling pensive at the time, but it passed. However, if I were to recommend one, it would be:
LifeSaver
For one thing, it’s written by one of the guys at DonationCoder, so you know it’s good. Also, he addressed some specific issues he had with other programs he’s tried.
if you want something more mature and with many more features, I’d recommend The Journal. It’s the same one that I mention in my first post of that thread.
Windows also can show you the day and date; just make the taskbar wider (2x)
Today I was telling someone how good Alfaclock and Betaclock are, and I discovered all the sad story behind the Alfaclock2 ripoff on your website! Thank you for the information.
I remeber that Betaclock site was not so “minimalistic” a couple of years ago, it was black and slick, probably it has been minimized when development has been stopped. At the time Alfaclock.com was working but now it’s only a white page. Anyway I’ve tested Alfaclock 1.90 and the latest Betaclock on Windows 7 (classic Win9x like mode) and they work perfectly