What time is it? Have your computer tell you the hour – every hour

This tip is for Windows 7 all versions.

Back in the day, our grandparents had cuckoo clocks. The bird came out on the hour. Every hour. This was not annoying. We got used to it. How would you would you like to have your computer tell you the hour, every hour, sort of like a cyber cuckoo. You may think we’re cuckoo for including this tip. But surely someone somewhere would actually like their computer to speak the time on the hour. Every hour.

You really want to do this, don’t you? OK. Start by typing this into Notepad (To launch Notepad, type Notepad in the start menu search form and press Enter. When it appears at the top, click its icon to start it.) Do NOT use Word or any other word processor. Use Notepad, okay?

Type the following (only the 4 lines below) exactly:

Dim speaks, speech
speaks=”It is”& hour(time) & “hours”
Set speech=CreateObject (“sapi.spvoice”)
speech.Speak speaks

Now save it as time.vbs . (In Notepad, all files are saved as text files by default. You’ll have to click the arrow at the bottom (in the “Save as” dialog) and choose “all files”. Then save it as:  time.vbs . Save it where you can easily find it – in  a place such as the “Documents” folder.

Click Start, type Scheduler in the start menu search, and click Task Scheduler, when it appears at the top of the Start menu. In the right pane of task scheduler, under Actions, click Create Task. Give the name “Time” to the new task. This task should run every new hour. Click Triggers then click New. In the New Trigger dialog box, set the full hour closest to the present time, check Repeat task every, choose 1 hour in the first drop-down list, and Indefinitely in the second. Confirm by clicking OK. See image below for assistance 🙂