Original review published on Steve Litchfield's 3-Lib.This is a useful little utility for all those people like me who don't like
wearing a watch and who find themselves squinting at the tiny clock on the PC's
taskbar or the Psion's toolbar. The idea is that if you just use your Series 5
for looking things up or making small updates, there's a lot of time when the
Psion's going to sit there doing nothing useful... so it might as well be a
large-fonted clock as well. Martin Guthrie's Clock5 is downloadable from
Pscience5
and I've been looking at v1.2.
![[Screen Shot]](/reviews/3lib/Clock5/clock5.gif)
I was a little thrown at first as I'd been expecting it to act like a
screen-saver, coming to the foreground after a few minutes inactivity on the
keyboard. In fact this is presumably too difficult to implement, as Martin has
chosen to simply make Clock5 'sleep' for a set number of minutes after being
dismissed. This has the unfortunate side-effect of occasionally cutting in just
as you've started working on the Psion again, but it's a fairly minor
inconvenience. Another minor (but unavoidable) point is that Clock5 (like all
other 3rd party applications) doesn't get restarted after a PsiWin backup, so
you have to remember to manually start it each time.
The major benefit of the utility is of course the clock itself. Having a
clock which I can read from across the room with ease is very handy indeed and
the on-screen graphics are well-designed and clear. Several different clock
designs are included, plus a calendar.
There's also a simple (optional) password facility, making Clock5 into a
useful security tool round the office. With the password enabled, all system
buttons and macro programs are locked out completely, preventing passers by
from fiddling with your 'expensive desk clock'(!). Once you've entered the
password, control-H sends Clock5 to the background so that you can gain access
and carry on working, though I found that keypresses were often locked out for
a second or two after doing this. If you need to leave your desk suddenly,
there's of course a hot-key to bring it immediately to the foreground.
Martin seems to have thought of most things. If he could somehow make it
work on an 'inactivity' basis, this freeware utility would get even better!
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