CNET editors’ review

Reviewed by: CNET Staff

Time to kick the Windows clock up a notch? With the ability to display one or more clocks on the desktop or in the system tray, the skinnable ZoneTick World Time Zone lets you see what time it is in every corner of the world at once.

Right-clicking a clock and selecting Preferences calls up the main interface, where you can easily set up a new clock and set multiple alarms. Depending on how you configure it, double-clicking a clock might display a simple calendar, a time converter, or the preferences window. You can set separate alarms for each time zone, either as a one-time deal or on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Another welcome feature is the ability to automatically sync your PC’s clock with an atomic server at regular intervals.

ZoneTick comes with 10 decent-looking skins, though the demo seems to provide access to only one. The trial version also won’t let you save more than one clock. Corporate users may balk at the lack of polish, but amateur globe-trotters will find that ZoneTick offers solid functionality at a reasonable price.

Publisher’s description

ZoneTick World Time Zone Clock replaces the regular Windows system clock with several time zones of your choosing. Multiple time zone clocks can be placed either in the system tray or on desktop. ZoneTick makes the Windows taskbar nicer by not only fully supporting Winamp digital skins, but also by providing a set of analog skins for vertical and thick taskbars. It comes with a graphical World Map and a free City Database for easy configuration of clocks. It’s also an atomic-time synchronizer and an alarm clock; you can set alarms for any time zone. This program may be used as a scheduler to launch applications or do custom actions. The scheduler supports one-time and recurring (for instance, daily or weekly) actions. The program comes with a calendar and a time converter for easy time calculations across multiple time zones. ZoneTick is available in English, Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.

Version 5.3.1 improves calendar and updates city database.