What time is it?

[micky]

if you set some parameter, you can have the Windows clock display seconds.

It's in one of the Tweak programs. 7+ Taskbar or Winaero.

Last week I found behind my bookshelp a radio controlled travel clock that I think I bought at a hamfest for a dollar.

After I changed the batteries it seems to be working fine, with the radio beacon icon showing. That must be working because the clock was off by hours when I first turned it on, and I never set the time.

And it's been running for a week and the time is always 53 seconds behind the windows time on the laptop!

Hmmm. My desktop is 2 seconds head of my laptop!

Does anybody really know what time it is!

[Bob F]

Time to get new synchronized clocks.

[Bob F]

You can tell Windows to use different sources for the time data. Try one of the "nist" options.

[Cindy Hamilton]

Does anybody really care?

[Big Al]

I have an Xfinity Set-top box with clock. It's time is set by Xfinity/Comcast by what benchmark I don't know. But my PC clock is dead on, or so close my eyes couldn't detect it.

[Dean Hoffman]

You're a little late asking.

"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know." Share this Quote Saint Augustine Read more at

[Scott Lurndal]

If so, I can't imagine why.

[Stan Brown]

I went there too, but you beat me to posting.

Video:

[Paul]

Your computer time error, is potentially printed on the right-hand side of this web page.

If you have any kit fitted with GPS, and a number of sats in the constellation can be "seen" by the GPS, the time output of the GPS can be very good. Good enough to set a watch even.

*******

As I was walking down the street one day... ... Does anybody really know what time it is Does anybody really care If so I can't imagine why We've all got time enough to cry

Paul

[micky]

That's what I had in mind with my last line.

But for the rest, some of you folks need more curiosity.

[Ed P]

Well, I certainly don't want to miss dinner.

[micky]

Very intersting. Yes, it says: "Your clock is off by: -1.366 s"

That's the laptop and it means the desktop is off by substantially less than a second.

So what does that mean, that desktops are better than laptops, that HP is better than ACER, that.... nothing at all.

It also seems to meant that the radio signal, which I figure is different from the one sent to computers, is off by 55 seconds.

That $69 GPS that I bought last month listed the satellites it was in contact with. 5 or 7 of them! But I don't remember it displaying the time. After all it was a lo-budget GPS. And it did really loads of things but not the one thing I wanted so I returned it, in like-new condition** -- I made sure not to take the film off the screen -- and when I get the next car I'm going to buy a more expensive one.

In short, it only worked when the direction I was going was at the top. I could get it to display with north at the top, but then the symbol that represented my car didn't move.

**Until they put the "Return-sticker" on the box.

Yes indeed.

[Dean Hoffman]

I eat at hungry time and I'm seldom late.

[Paul]

GPS have low baud rate serial messages called "sentences". My GPS has TX,RX,GND and runs at something like 9600 baud. Using a TTL logic level USB serial port, I can cable it to the computer and get the sentences.

The sentence in the example, has a time stamp.

$GPGGA,092750.000,5321.6802,N,00630.3372,W,1,8,1.03,61.7, M, 55.2,M,,*76 hhmmss.sss ddmm.mmmm dddmm.mmmm height meters checksum lat long

That's just to give some idea what information it was able to obtain from comparing info from multiple satellites (constellation).

The first field in the sentence, is the UTC time.

My GPS seems to emit about four sentences a second ($GPGGA is just one of the sentence types).

Is it worth what I paid for it ? No :-)

You can only look at the light flash on it, for so long, before the thrill wears off.

Paul

[Scott Lurndal]

If you have a network connection, and your system has an NTP (Network Time protocol) service, then the NTP service will routinely adjust your computer clock to align with the time standard.

Many server environments have NTP servers synchronized with GPS satellites to ensure consistent view of time across an entire datacenter.

For environments where there isn't a synchronized time environment:

[Thomas]

Ct~t(t) --> Cl(tl') + (1 - ~)(t - tl') - n~. (4) From PC1, IRI' and 2' we deduce that Cl(/l') >" Cl(tl) + (1 -- K)(tl' -- /1). Combining this with (4) and using (2), we get Cn+a(t) > C~(tl) + (1 - x)(t - t~) - n~ (5) for t > tn+l.

That. Micky. Is what's wrong with your clock

[micky]

Okay. I'll get that fixed.

BTW, my phone had the same time as one of the computers. I think it was the same as the nist.time.gov.

[Thomas]

My 2 weather stations are both 2 minutes off. Different brands. Setting manually does nothing.

[Leala]

...and that's what killed the cat.

[Chris]

Modern OSes regularly correct the time via connecting to an NTP server. A drift means that there's something interfering with that connection either through a misconfiguration or the laptop is switched off for long periods or something else.