There are a number of web sites that offer software that will synchronize
your computer clock to the world's timing standard, the Cesium atomic
clock at the National Institute of Technology (NIST), in Boulder, CO.
Years ago they were known as the National Bureau of Standards (NBS). The
signals are accurate (they say) to one part in ten billion.

You can download  SYNCCLK.EXE at www.answersthatwork.com and there's
another one at www.worldtimeserver.com/atomic-clock.

For those of you who set your computer clock manually here's another bit
of useful information.  You can buy, for a very reasonable price, a desk
or wall clock with a build-in radio that picks up the NIST timing signals
from their transmitters at Fort Collins, CO - they get the info from that
Cesium clock in Boulder - some 40 or 50 miles away.  An interesting
tidbit is that the 200 microseconds or so that it takes to transmit the
signals from the clock in Boulder to the transmitters in Fort Collins is
taken into account before they are sent out to the world.  Walgreens Drug
Stores are selling the clocks for between $5 and $20 depending on whether
or not you want the month, date, temperature, etc along with the time.
For those in the Far East there's another NIST transmitter in Hawaii.
(The fact that the clocks are made in China explains the low prices)

I'm a ham radio operator and occasionally check my Walgreen clock here
against the timing signals I can receive direct from the NIST
transmitters (I'm in Tennessee and can hear both the Colorado and the
Hawaii transmitters so the range is quite good) and there's never been
any discernable difference between the two in the past two years.

One other item - I had thought that there was a capacitor in the computer
battery circuit that holds the voltage up for the short time interval
that it takes to replace the battery so the computer doesn't lose it's
mind then..  Does anyone know for sure?

Best,

Lewis Emerson

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