I'm a big fan of

I'm a big fan of the "set it and forget it" school of computer hardware and software. Though, the trouble with that is applications and hardware of that nature are extremely rare. If you look at other things in our lives, most everything is "set it and forget it." My cordless home phone has worked flawlessly for years. My toaster oven only requires minor light-dark adjustment once every few months. I save time by not having to worry if the microwave oven is going to function properly tonight when I get hungry. But computers, that's a different story.

There are a few things I'd like for my computer, one of which is something so simple, I can't believe I can't find it. I want something that will check an atomic clock server once every 24hrs, and sync my machine's clock. I don't want to launch a program, or schedule a launcher, or run anything in my taskbar or system tray. I want it to run completely invisibly, in the background as a service, so I can set it up once and never have to worry about it again. Actually, come to think of it, I'm using a $2,000 computer with a $300 operating system (win2k), and it can't even tell time. Why is this not built into the OS automatically?

If anyone has used or knows of such a program, post a comment here. I accidentally botched the comment file I was using, but the gist of the conversation was that the lesser known net time services in windows could actually accomplish everything I wanted (oh and that it has been built into the MacOS through a nice simple interface for years [thanks Lawrence]). Meg covers it here.