14 DAY TRIAL // We are in the middle of summer and as we speak almost everybody is thinking of taking a vacation at the seaside or in the mountains. But even if we manage to put things in order when it comes to taking time off work and planning everything for the perfect vacation, there's still something that we cannot control, and that is the weather.
But although we don't have any power over rain or sun, at least we can be well informed on the forecast and nowadays there are a lot of methods that provide useful real time information on that, from the plain old newspaper, to the weather forecast on TV, to special software.
And talking about software and meteorological phenomena, I, just like most people, have been searching for a program to always keep me in the know on the weather forecast, and this is how I found My Free Weather.
The application comes in really handy because you can install it onto your notebook and view detailed weather information and check the last weather changes while on the road. It is also very useful in situations where you have no time to buy a newspaper or you don't have a TV set nearby to switch on the weather channel and see the forecast.
If we take a glimpse at the user interface, we could say that we are dealing with a nice animated weather forecast piece of software that looks very good on the computer desktop, and as follows we are going to find out if it does just a good a job as its looks are.
After shortly browsing through its features you'll find out that you can check the weather in any city in the world, watch the clouds moving on the small banner at the top of the window and even see daily detailed forecast info on a certain area, but maybe the most important of them all is the fact that you will be alerted in case of severe weather conditions. That comes in really handy especially when you plan to escape to a far away location and you need a good forecast tool, so you don't have to spend your entire vacation indoors.
Let's take it from the beginning. First of all, after installing this software on your computer you will be pretty amazed by its fine looks. No fancy buttons, no complicated forecast internet servers to set up, no numerous parameters. All you have to do is enter the name or the zip code of the city you want info on.
After selecting the desired location you will be welcomed by an animated screen that shows the current sun position on the sky, between sunrise and sunset and the sky status: clouds, rain, snow flakes and more. Here you can also find the necessary information regarding wind speed, wind direction, humidity and visibility.
If you take a look at the left side of the window you'll find a useful thermometer that shows the current air temperature both in Celsius and Fahrenheit degrees, while in the center of the window the current temperature is displayed. This is one of the best features of the app because not only that it shows the current temperature but it also indicates the one that is felt based on other aspects. For example, if it shows 26 degrees Celsius but the humidity level is very high, the temperature our body feels is a few degrees above the air temperature.
Moving on to the next section of this tool, you'll find its most important feature: the 5-day weather forecast. After testing this program for a few days you will realize that it's pretty accurate, with no major differences between the indicated temperature or wind speed and the real conditions. If you take a look at the 5-day weather forecast you can easily notice that the daytime temperatures are indicated in red and the nighttime temperatures in green. An icon will also appear illustrating the sun for sunny days, clouds four cloudy days and so on.
The moment has come to talk about the customization of this program. You won't find a large variety of features that you can customize, but the ones the program has are enough. You can choose a list of various cities and the default temperature indicator in Celsius or Fahrenheit degrees, and you can specify the weather update frequency, from 15 minutes up to 180 minutes, although with this last feature your weather forecast will not be that accurate.
So, after testing this program I can say I am pretty pleased with it, especially because of the fact that it is so accurate and last but not least because it has such a lovely interface.
The Good
The best part of My Free Weather is its accuracy, but the nice animated interface and the fact that it helps you easily find out the weather forecast for the next few days are definitely a plus too.
The Bad
It would not be fair to say that this program is perfect. There is one thing that can be pretty disturbing and that's the fact that an update interval of the weather forecast smaller than 15 minutes is not available. Usually, no major changes in the weather occur in less than 15 minutes but it would be nice to have such an option anyway, just in case.
The Truth
Overall, I can say that, compared to other weather forecasting pieces of software, My Free Weather is pretty good, based on the following: first, it's free; second, you do not need any kind of account or member login; and last but not least, you don't have to set up a connection with a weather forecast server.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
