Free Alarm Clock is a capable desktop clock that squeezes a surprising number of features into its compact and straightforward interface.

You're able to create as many alarms as you like, for instance, and each one can be set to repeat on whatever days you like. So you might set one alarm that wakes you early on Monday to Friday, for instance, while a second is set a little later for the weekend.

Alarms can optionally have a pop-up message, useful if you'd like to use the program to create reminders for particular tasks.

Of course there are multiple alarm sounds available, including a very realistic phone, door bell-type chimes, birdsong, sleighbells and others. But if these don't appeal, then you can always specify an MP3 file of your own.

A handy "turn on the volume" option allows Free Alarm Clock to set the speaker volume before it plays, useful if you've accidentally turned it down earlier.

There's even an option to wake up your computer from sleep to play the alarm, so you won't have to leave it on all the time.

And you can even run Free Alarm Clock from a USB flash drive, which means you can take your alarms with you and run them from any convenient Windows PC.