ZTIME

Windows comes with a great variety of handy tools to make it look cool, but most importantly to help you with nearly any kind of activity. Needless to say that it’s also fitted with a clock so you’re up to date with all events. You can also use third-party alternatives for greater variety of customization options, and ZTIME is a suitable example in this regard.

First of all, you need to know that it’s portable, so you can see what it’s all about from the moment download is done. More than this, it’s possible to have it stored on a USB flash drive in case you want it to be your personal time-teller, regardless of the computer you’re working on. Registry entries are not modified, so system stability is not put at risk.

When launched, a rather confusing window shows up, mostly because a title bar, without any other elements. It can be freely moved across the desktop to a suitable position, and it stays on top of everything else. Unfortunately, you can’t attach it to other window title bars, so it might be a little frustrating, considering it reserves the top layer to itself.

Needless to say that the title bar is empty, but it shows a couple of clocks by default. This is because one of them is the default UTC time, while the other is read from your system. Unfortunately, the application allows you to toggle the visibility of a timer, but the item in question is the system clock, and not the UTC, which might not be the item of interest here.

You can bring up the preferences panel for a few general options. Apart from the clock toggle option, you can choose to show date, seconds, and whether or not to animate the icon. The latter option applies to both the title bar icon, as well as the taskbar icon.

Taking everything into consideration, we can state that ZTIME comes with good intentions, but it’s heavily underprepared to serve as the default clock replacement. The mode of presentation leaves much to be desired, and the option to toggle the clock affects the one you might want to keep up alone.