Have you ever wanted to
keep the clock of your computer accurate? What about
being reminded when somebody's birthday is approaching?
Do you want to see a calendar? All those things have one
thing in common; time. There are many programs out there
that do just that, but I've never seen one that does it
better than PTB Sync, and for that, all the author asks
is to make a donation to any non-profit organization. The
program has no spyware, no adware nor any of "these
parasites", as the author calls them.
The main purpose of PTB Sync is to
keep the time on your computer clock accurate using one
of the atomic clocks available on the Internet. That
feature is fairly easy to use, simply select whether you
have dial-up connection or a permanent connection, and
then let the program do the work in the background. If
you wish, you can change many of the options such as
which time server to use, how often you want to update
the clock, set the time zone, and so on.
The second main function
it does is to remind you of any event you wish. For
example, to be reminded of April Fool's day one day in
advance every year, you select the day with the calendar,
set the repetition to "1 year", enter the
message, and finally set the "Hint before" to
"1 times every 1 days".
If you want, you can set the
program to do a number of things when the time arrives,
such as sounding an alarm, show a message, or even start
a program to do any number of functions such as starting
a backup. PTB Sync has a fairly extensive list of
holidays that can be added using the Holiday button. The
program can adjust the dates depending on the moon for
example, or display the age in the case of a birthday.
If you want, you can also
add many kinds of calendars to your desktop. In the image
above (left) you see the date, the lunar phase, a calendar and a
list of upcoming events. The calendar function can also
generate printed or HTML versions. It can also
change the look of the system clock and display much more
info such as the number of remaining days in year.
Finally, I
have to mention the cute little green man that moves his
eyes in a funny way, visible in all the configuration
screens, and contrary to MS Clippy, I think you will like
him.
The program
is available at http://elmue.de.vu/.
Bottom Line:
PTB Sync
Free - with a request from the author for a donation to any non-profit organization
http://elmue.de.vu/
Originally published: March, 2004
