Oh My Darling Clementime

By David Coverston

Often, a conversation between a computer user and the IT staff goes something like this:

User: My computer is taking a long time to open a document.

IT staff: Well, how big is the document?

User: About the same as my other documents, 75 KB.

IT staff: How long does it take to open?

User: Uhhh… a long time?

Notice that the first question was answered by a quantifiable answer, but the second question was more subjective. It’s easy to look up the size of a file in Explorer, but how do you measure how long an event takes?

You can note the time stamp on a file when you start an operation, then compare it to the time stamp when you finish the operation. The problem with this technique is that you have to save the file at the end of your operation, which you may or may not want to do, and then you have to calculate the elapsed time. If you have a stopwatch handy, you can avoid these limitations by using it instead. You could also use Clementime.

What is Clementime?

Clementime is a simple stopwatch program. It measures how much time elapses between pushing the Start button and the Stop button.

Clementime is a freeware so its shortcomings can be ignored. There is one thing I would change in its operation, but I’ll address that in a minute.

Get started by downloading the ZIP file from http://www.kobayashi.com/ . There are only two files in the ZIP file, the executable and the program documentation. Create a folder where you want to keep the files, and then extract the files to that folder. You can create a shortcut to Clementime.exe. Start Clementime using your shortcut or by double-clicking Clementime.exe, and there you have your stopwatch.

Using the program is very simple. Click the Start button to begin timing your event, and then click the Stop button when the event is over. If you want to add the time of several events together, click the Pause button. When you click the Pause button, it changes to a Resume button, so you can keep clicking the button to add the time of several events.

When you click the Stop button, the Confirm dialog box appears, asking if you want to stop the timer and clear the counter. When you click Yes, the counter is cleared but the Elapsed Time display does not change. It does not reset to zero until you click the Start button or you restart the program. Yes, that is the one thing I would change about it. However, for general performance testing, or just for answering your IT person’s question, “How long did it take?,”  try Clementime.

David is a senior member of STC and Secretary of STCOrlando Chapter. He enjoys teaching others how to be more productive so he writes the ‘Tool Tips’ column for his chapter newsletter to share his discoveries with others. This article originally appeared in MtM, the STC Orlando chapter newsletter, August 2005 issue, and might have undergone some editorial changes to comply with the editorial policy of Indus.