I've been using TimeSnapper for 2 years and it's the first application I install on Windows when I rebuild my machines. Every week it pays for itself.

Why? Because it's not just about the statistics (frankly, I don't use 'em). It's all about the screenshots, which tell me:
* things I forgot to indicate on my timesheet that I can bill for
* whatever I had typed into Firefox or QuickBooks or whatever app that crashed or I accidentally closed...I can't say how many times on a weekly basis I lose some text that I typed or work that I did. Some people do the usual scream out loud or simply cry inside when they lose that work. I just roll back to TimeSnapper and check out what I did. Think of your last experience with that. With TimeSnapper it truly would be your last time you lost all that work

Some other things I use it for:
* When employees are training each other, we run it on that machine with a really small time interval to have a capture of the steps
* When I forget some website I went to but can't quite recall, I can just look to see what I was doing around that time (yes, I know how to use browser history, but this is a useful alternate approach)
* When I think I may have saved over something (or typed over it), I can search for the filename in TimeSnapper and see what work I'd done

And I should also point out that the data is stored on my machine and automatically deleted every few weeks.

I don't use TimeSnapper at all for the statistics--just for finding out exactly what I did when I would have otherwise forgotten or lost it. I'm a fan of RescueTime as well because I think its reporting offers a great deal of comparative information. But TimeSnapper is all about the screenshots, which you'll pretty quickly get addicted to.

Jared Goralnick

i've been using timesnapper for about a year now, the pro version. i really like the recent feature where they color-code your daily timeline into red & green periods, green being productive, red being un-productive. you assign apps or window-title text to the productive category and it keeps track of how well you do staying on task during the day.

i'm always happy if my productivity is above 50% for the day :)

i've also assigned a password which encrypts the screen shots so noone but me can snoop in on my lack of productivity

jacobsee

Hello! (I'm one of the developers of TimeSnapper)

>What's the point of screenshots?

The screenshot journal in TimeSnapper is really useful for those who need to track time (for billing) since the screenshots tell you a lot more (and a lot quicker) than statistics. If you don't need the screenshots, you can skip them but still get everything else.

One important difference between TimeSnapper and RescueTime is that TimeSnapper stores all data locally on your computer while RescueTime uploads the data to their server. Not everyone is willing (or able) to send their computer usage data to a 3rd party.

>sounds like it has potential as a keystroke-logger "Lite"

It does not log keystrokes nor is it intended to be used to spy on anyone else than yourself! :)

atlioddsson

sounds like it has potential as a keystroke-logger "Lite"

peters4n6

I second Rescue Time unless you are the tin-foil hat kind of person in which case it is probably not for you.

I found it very useful to see where my time was going.

EracMan

This has to be every bosses and the NSA's wet dream.

theblackdog

Incase you forgot what that good pr0n site was?

johnsmith1234

Or you could install Rescue Time for free, and get the same stats. What's the point of screenshots?

WalterBellhaven

Oh ya, lets make a video download feature so you can have .avi files and stuff and make time-lapse videos of your computer with this.

Brad

Probably the best out of all of these "Is my wife cheating?" software is Spector Pro. It has stistics, how long you spend on different things, time of day your on it. e-mail dialogs.. key logger.. screen shots.. and is completely stealth

"calculate how long you spend on certain time" come on.. i don't buy that. people who use these software have other agendas.

Ken

And I don't see how screenshots can help, I don't see people every time at the end of the day going through numerous screenshots to figure out how much time they worked, it's simply not practical.

JDonner

I don'tsee how any program can monitor what you're doing all day. Just the fact that a program is open doesn't mean anything.

JDonner

It's not spyware (intentionally). Not only does it give you a movie of your day, testers can use it to figure out the steps to reproduce a bug; it can OCR the screen-shot to actually recover un-saved text; you can figure out when someone called (if you open your contact manager when they do) or IM'd, and if that really happened before or after something else.

richardchaven

@Ken:

From the TimeSnapper website:

We deliberately make it very easy to tell if TimeSnapper is running.

The two most obvious signs: the TimeSnapper icon in the system tray, and the program "TimeSnapper.exe" listed amongst running files.

This isn't supposed to be stealth, because it's not supposed to be spyware. And if you run spyware because you suspect your wife is cheating on you, your marriage is already over.

If I wasn't using a Mac, I'd love that productivity analyzer.

snowmentality

I like PTM (search for it on lifehacker.com). It is just the right amount of interference to remind me to think about what I'm doing. When I'm working on my timecard, I use a handy "summary" tab and don't have to scroll through the activities I did to count.

suzannejb