People keep asking about WinLog Assist’s AutoPause settings–that’s almost certainly the same as PC Fare Meter’s Inactivity Seconds setting (AutoPause can only be set in minutes). The setting determines how long a window is considered to be actively in use after the last user interaction, and may account for some of the differences I observed between timings. Hronos doesn’t have an equivalent setting. WinLog Assist and PC Fare Meter both have options for continuous monitoring. PC Fare Meter also has the ability to use total project time (although not tracked per window), even when Inactivity Seconds is in use.

Vista users can access their VirtualStore, typically it’s in
C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\VirtualStore

#43, mike, only a fool would turn off Vista UAC. It definitely does increase security. As I said, TweakUAC eliminates the most annoying prompts, but leaves UAC on, and you’ll still get prompts in security-critical situations. I don’t want to get into the browser-wars issues, but most claims about how Firefox security is great and IE sucks are way overblown, particularly in Vista. Firefox is a little better, not a lot better, security-wise. Many so-called browser security holes don’t affect PC’s which have decent security software, and many don’t impact Vista UAC IE users, where Internet sessions run in protected mode. In fact, Vista will automatically send Internet web requests to protected-mode IE instances, and local web files to unprotected IE instances.

PC Fare Meter is astonishingly versatile, but as I said, it’s not for people who need their hands held. Here are some hints. While visible UI elements generally have tooltips, many apparently static elements are actually active UI elements (poor UI design). Try clicking not only on rows, but on different places in rows, such as leading elements, items in different columns, etc. Some rows have at least four different “hot” zones. Also, there are differences between the UI features that are available when a project’s timer is running and when it isn’t (you can do a lot more when it isn’t). Of course, column headings are generally active elements. People who haven’t used PC Fare Meter don’t understand just how much better it is than most of the competitive products. True, it won’t give you a pie chart of user activity per process (although it can export its logs in useful formats for analysis), but that’s not particularly useful information. You may have used your browser a lot, but what were you using it for? PC Fare Meter can automatically (after you set it up) categorize different types of activity. You can, for example, record Giveaway of the Day browser activity separate from work or webmail activity. It matches process names and window captions against text or regular expressions (selectable) which the user defines (and there’s a handy search feature which helps you refine the strings). You can manually start and stop timers for different projects or tasks (also from the tray icon’s context menu), assign task names within projects, change start and stop times later, re-scan logged activity later (after you’ve changed the auto-move rules), etc.

Another user-activity tool is the Google-search history. If you use a Google account (and stay logged-in), then under your Google Web History, you can get interesting information on your Google searches over selectable periods of time (click on Trends, then select the time period). I use the Google Toolbar beta, but I think a Google account may be sufficient.

You know, I do not know about anyone else, but I am getting real tired of comments like this. Just for the record Goskyhi, not everyone is on Vista. My personal opinion of that piece of OS is that is needs ALOT of work before everyone will sing its’ praises. Why is it we all have to bow down to Vista users? If the software does not work for you…DON’T USE IT.
As for the software…downloaded fine, activated fine, seemed to work ok, pretty easy. Nothing I need, but if you need a clock watcher, this one works.

It is something you can set and forget and it will log time spent on all active apps. The Report function is well done (if you have Excel installed – I haven’t tried to see if it can be set to use OpenOffice).

By way of Help there could be, at least, some explanation of the Project window and what Auto Pause does. There is no information, even, under ‘Features’ on the web site.

Even though, as a time management tool, it should help one use time more efficiently/profitably, I feel that it is very overpriced for what it does. I found that PCFareMeter (freeware from Sourceforge) http://projecttimer.sourceforge.net/ has much more functionality if one needs to assign costs to one’s activity (and even if one does not). If the two were offered at the same price, I would buy PCFareMeter.

Hronos is a similar app (and very small, being just an .exe file) but does not have the facility to export results to Excel or to assign tasks to projects.

But as to the software, it might be useful for monitoring children’s computer usage.

Installed and registered perfect.
I turned off Auto-Pause because I have no idea what it does.

There is no Help that I could find. Help menu only shows “About”, where is the help on “Auto Pause” feature???

Very good overall, can’t beat the price!

I was thinking of building my own application for Exactly this…
“useful for those people who spend a lot of time working with the computer and want to know what they actually spend their time on.”

I know somebody who plays a lot of Solitaire on the PC, and would love to show them the hours they are spending on those games… this will be fun! :D

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Spying on children is not going to get you anywhere, and it’s very easy to turn this program off.