Alarm clock for the road
 

I hate hotel alarm clocks with a passion. I'm a lot more productive at work when I actually am able to wake up properly and get into the office, so I'm searching for the perfect travel clock. My requirements:

- Atomic automagic time
- Loud enough to be heard over ridiculously loud hotel air conditioners
- Readable at night
- Tiny/light
- Good snooze function
- Thermometer would be excellent- I hate trying to gauge room temperature or inaccurate hotel thermostats

My front runner at the moment is the Oregon Scientific RM928A. The main drawback I see is the weird stand/case and tiny snooze button.

The Microbeam Travel Clock looks pretty darned neat just for the light even though there's no atomic clock.

There are others from Casio and a few others, but nothing seems to stand out.

Any strong favorites out there or experience with any of the above? Anyone mind providing wake up calls? :)

I use my cellphone. It's a Sony T610. The alarm is very loud and annoying. The snooze works well and it sets the time automagically.

I do exactly the same thing, with exactly the same phone. It doesnt have the temperature reading.. but this does mean one less thing to carry around.

I have a Nokia 6610 cell and that is also my alarm clock of choice while I'm travelling. It resets whenever I hit a new timezone and shut it off/on so I guess that the time is probably also set automagically (I like that term, never heard it before). It has a snooze but definitely no thermometer. The buzz increases in insistence the longer its left to run and if the phone is sitting on a dresser or nighttable, the vibrating sound also helps the wake up process.

I'll add I'm not really looking to use my cell phone as an alarm clock. I carry a Treo 650 and find it to be horrible as an alarm clock but great as many other things as I travel. When I had a less fancy phone (e105) I did find it useful for alarms as well. I'm really looking for a standalone alarm clock.

Thanks for more suggestions...

I just bought one of these.

http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/ca...html?sku=DK019

I have not used the alarm yet.

It is a little bigger than I thought - close to a Palm PC - but I love the functions, pretty much for the same reasons stated above.

Interesting
 

This is a good idea.....it was an interesting technological moment when I realized my cell phone was the most accurate clock or watch I own....I keep wondering why I still wear a watch :)

Another cell phone alarm clock user here!

Is a Treo the same as a Palm underneath? There's a free Palm program called BigClock that turns it into an excellent alarm clock. It coexists with the builtin clock program. http://www.bigclock.de/

international
 

It was only about a year ago, that one could get a truly international clock that would set to colorado, europe and japan atomic clock signals.

There was one at brookstone that did that, was small as well and had a timex type indiglo light. But, it was a bit cheap in the materials, I guess all the money went to having three radios.

Nobody yet makes a watch with true international clock sync, but as others have posted, a cell phone gets time updates from the local tower, so that will always update the clock there. I use my cell phone all the time for this.

That hummer looks okay, nice price too.

You can get a temperature reading. I used this a while ago on my T68i, but it reportedly works on the T610. See:

http://quiezent.dyndns.org/sonyericsson_t68i.html

Same here with same phone. I just wish I could set the snooze for something other than 9 minutes.

you can
 

you can, in the service menu.

Check out Sharper Image, like this one

http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/ca...html?sku=DK019

And it's on sale.

Also check their auction site, there are always clocks there.

I had a Sharper Image alarm clock and it drove me nuts. I would snooze it like 3 times and then poof it would just turn itself off. Apparently my clock thought I wasn't interested in getting up so it wasn't going to bother me anymore! :D

I have since gone to my basic Timex Indiglo travel alarm clock. It has a pleasant but loud ring. It let's me snooze multiple time. I haven't changed the battery in over a year, so it isn't a battery hog. It has simple easy to set buttons. I bought mine at Target but here is the identical one I got.

http://travelstore.ricksteves.com/ca...=product&id=25