Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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125 of 126 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This thing is great, once you get it set up, May 6, 2005
We bought this to use as a timer for my daughter who is almost 4. We were all tired of the endless hassles involved in trying to get ready to go out, go to bed, and so on.
It has worked remarkably well. Now I can start the timer a half hour before we leave for preschool, and she knows when she has to start hurrying, and also realizes when she doesn't yet have to. When it announces "Time's up!", she knows that we're *going*.
Strong points are that the timer is colorful and attractive, and gives feedback in several ways. I can look at the digital display and know exactly how much time is left. My daughter can see the green, yellow, and red lights, and know roughly where she stands. The flashes before the color changes and the programmable audible feedback are very helpful, too. It just gives a lot of different ways for us to understand how much time is left.
The main drawback is that the controls are awkward. There is both a manual and an automatic mode, but they are both pretty similar. "Manual" means you set the amount of time for each phase, along with the optional sounds. "Automatic" means you set the total time, and the percentage of the total for each phase. Once you have a standard one set, you can reuse it (which is good for our 30-minute morning routine), but if you need to change it (like this morning, I only had 20 minutes) you have to do some button-pushing, and you need to choose the sounds for each phase as well as the time.
My guess is that we'll eventually settle on a couple of standard programs and just leave it at those. It's well worth using, regardless, but the awkwardness of the controls keeps me from giving this five stars.
One last note: the picture of the product is slightly misleading. The numbers on the digital display are quite small; about half as large as they appear in the picture. And the back of the tower is all solid blue: the colored lights are only on the front. That's not a problem, because you can see from a wide range of angles, but for some reason I thought the lights would be visible all around.
This item has definitely reduced the stress level on all sides. There is less nagging, less fussing, and more cooperation.
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34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It works!, November 10, 2005
I bought this because my son dawdles when he does anything. The first night, we used it to get him to finish his dinner. It worked, but he didn't like it. Now, I just have to threaten that I'll bring out the timer and he gets going. We also use it for naptime. I don't require that he sleeps during naptime, only that he stay in his room for two hours. He had no concept of when that is. With the Time Tracker, he comes out when the light turns red (he does not get upset when used for this purpose). As for programming, I have no trouble programming it and it doesn't take long to change it. They could have made it more intuitive, but you just have to do it a couple of times to get it.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Such potential! Such disappointment., July 3, 2006
We had high hopes for this product but as another reviewer has said, its engineering is HORRIBLE. I would only recommend this product if you always want to use the same time span. I say this because you can set a default time which is relatively easy to reuse.
The idea of 80% green, 15% yellow, and 5% red is great, but if you're hoping to enter 1-5-0-0-start and get a 15-minute 80/15/5 countdown, forget it. Every time I want to use the thing I have to go track down and re-read the documentation. Because of the difficulty in using it, we only use it for long tasks.
As I'm trying to figure out how to use it each time, I do so with gladness that there is no one timing me as I set the timer. :-/
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