BestAlarmClock

While it's not the absolute best, as its title suggests, this alarm clock program delivers as promised.

BestAlarmClock's interface is simple to operate and comes with animated characters that guide you through the program. It displays two analog clocks on your desktop, though we don't see the need for them. You can set one-time alarms, or you can program them to recur on daily and weekly intervals. As in similar applications, you can opt to accompany alarms with personal reminders, your favorite MP3 or WAV file, or have the animated characters remind you when the alarm expires. We like the option to record your own voice to use as the alarm sound.

BestAlarmClock provides a calendar and stopwatch and docks in the system tray, but it doesn't come with a snooze feature or atomic server synchronization tools. Additionally, we encountered a small glitch while selecting the reminder options. Despite its few quirks, this freeware gets the job done and is worth a download.