Windows 7 and Multiple Clocks

So unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few weeks/months, you may have heard about a little thing called Windows 7. Windows 7 is Microsoft’s latest iteration of its Operating System and along with a slew of other stuff (i.e. security enhancements, pretty new stuff to love, Windows management features, etc.) there’s a nice little feature I find comes in handy, especially when you work with a global community like PASS (and you SQL peeps thought this post wasn’t going to pertain to you…)

The feature I’m talking about is multiple clocks in your system tray. I’m not sure if this was available in Vista as well but I thought I’d share with everyone how to do it in Windows 7. First click on your clock in the bottom right-hand corner.

Next click on the ‘Change date and time settings’ link to bring up the Date and Time box. Click on the tab for Additional Clocks.

Once here you can add up to two additional clocks in addition to your default clock for a total number of 3 possible clocks! Simple check the ‘Show this clock’ box to enable the clock. Use the dropdown menu to select the appropriate time zone you wish to monitor. You can also give the clock a custom label for display purposes. Once you’re done click OK.

Now if you click on your clock in your taskbar again you should see your newly added clocks!

I live in Florida so the clocks I like to monitor are either West Coast or India since those are the two time zones I tend to end up working with the most. Sure I could probably do the math for someplace close like the West Coast but I’m a geek, and I like to see my information quick and at a glance.

And since we’re talking about Windows 7, I’ve included in this blog a zip file of step-by-step directions on how to do this (screenshots included) courtesy of another really cool feature in Windows 7 called the Problem Steps Recorder.  With this tool you can see step-by-step how a user got to a problem or you can use it to document an issue like I have here.

Download Zip File