Atomic Alarm Clock Review

Still rocking the default Windows clock? Maybe it’s time for a sweeping change you can make to your system for replacing and redesigning your clock from the ground up, as well as adding several extra features which are not yet supported by Microsoft's operating systems.

Since there is not much to brag about the standard Windows clock, which provides basic functionality and plain looks, a powerful desktop enhancement utility is always welcomed for improving your productivity and making the work area much user-friendlier.

Customizing your desktop covers a wide range of operations that you may opt for, such as altering the theme and wallpaper, tweaking the Start Menu, resizing the taskbar, adding a toolbar to the taskbar, changing how icons appear in the notification area, and replacing the clock.

While some of these actions may have a major impact on your computer and performance, results may not be quite satisfactory, switching from the standard Windows clock to a fully customizable and rich-featured one can do no harm to your system, but it can actually improve its overall functionality.

The application put to the test, Atomic Alarm Clock, gives you full control over the customization process of your clock and offers support for several handy features, such as an alarm clock, multiple skins, an atomic-time synchronizer, hourly chimes, a calendar, different time zones, and sound notifications.

However, all the aforementioned goodies don’t come for free and you can purchase a license for $29.95/€21.59. You can also test the program for 60 days and see if it meets your requirements.

Skins and displaying options

The wide range of supported skins really makes a difference, as you are able to customize the looks of your clock using more than 30 themes included in the package.

There are several tweaking parameters which empower you to show the date, seconds, days of the week, system uptime, and percent of memory in use, activate the 12-hour format, as well as make the clock background transparent, stick to the default background options, or choose a color and set its transparency and embed borders.

Alarms

Among the best things about Atomic Alarm Clock is its smart alarm system, which provides a flexible timetable. The alarm may be triggered at a certain date and time, once every few hours, on a daily basis, or on certain days and hours. When an alarm goes off, the tool displays a notification on your desktop from where you can stop or snooze it.

There is also support for sound notifications, and you can select from different preset audio files or add a custom one from your computer (MP3, WMA, or WAV file format). The sound can be played for a specified number of times or until you dismiss the alarm window. Additionally, you may insert a pause between the sounds (in seconds), alter the volume, and apply fading in options.

Not only does the program play sound notifications, but it is also able to open a custom application or document (e.g. EXE, MP3, M3U, AVI) with certain parameters, shut down or restart the computer, activate the standby or hibernate mode, log on as a different user, or turn off the monitor. You may pick the window style when the alarm is triggered, namely normal, minimized, or maximized.

Other powerful features enable you to wake the computer in case it goes to standby or hibernate mode, embed a user-defined text message (e.g. “Don’t forget about…”) and assign a suggestive icon from several preset options, remove or edit the alarms, as well as sort them by active or inactive status.

Plus, you can choose between several preset text messages that are grouped in different categories (e.g. Home/Family, Health, Work/Business, Taxes/Bills) and export the alarm settings to INI file format for importing them in your future projects.

Calendar

It offers support for a built-in calendar, which can be moved to any area of the screen. You may go to the previous or next month using the arrow keys or mouse clicks, jump from one year to another, as well as return to the current date with just one click or by pressing “Enter.”

The calendar is also highly customizable, as you can choose between various preset skins (e.g. Modern, Metro, Vista, Transparent, Flat, Blue), and comes packed with a few configuration settings of its own, which let you to set its transparency, make it stay on top of other utilities or documents, as well as show week number and days from the previous or next month.

Time zones and atomic clock servers

Atomic Alarm Clock is not just a fully customizable clock, but it offers support for several advanced functions that help you view the time displayed in different time zones and synchronize the system time with atomic clock servers.

You are allowed to select the time zone from a drop-down list, display the date, enter a name for the current clock, choose between several preset servers or add a custom one, as well as automatically adjust the computer’s time at a certain time.

Customization

The program comprises a bunch of dedicated parameters which are built specifically for helping you play a sound notification for marking the passing of each hour, run the app at Windows startup, make it stay on top of other utilities, as well as pick the action that is triggered when clicking on the clock, namely show the calendar, primary panel, or Date and Time properties, change the clock skin randomly, or show the default Windows calendar.

Last but not least, with a right-click mouse operation on the clock you are offered the possibility to access the main window, set up a new alarm, add a quick reminder (which can be activated at a certain hour or in several minutes), reveal the calendar, show the Date and Time panel, apply random skins, as well as exit the program.

Atomic Alarm Clock gives you the possibility to set up different alarms, which are tied to custom events. You can activate alarms with sound notifications and custom messages, check the time and even display the seconds, monitor memory usage and system uptime, view the time for different locations, synchronize the system time with an atomic clock server, as well as select from a wide array of skins for customizing the looks of the clock.

The Bad