I usually use the weather channel (website) to check the weather forcast, but I am not super impressed with their accuracy. The also do not give a forcast for the amount of precipitation, WTF is that, it’s gonna snow - might be two inches, might be two feet but we’re not gonna say. I had the weather channel ‘desktop weather’ installed a while ago until I had problems with it working correctly but I was never super impressed with it anyway.
My wife has ‘weather bug’ installed on her computer, it looks OK but is very heavy on Ads. The do offer an ad free version for $19.95 a year which seems reasonable if it works well.
I should mention I have an always on Cable modem and windows XP. I would prefer something free but I am willing to pay for something if it works very good. And of course I don’t want anything with spyware or adware built into it.
I think Rainmeter can be configured to do that sort of thing. Haven’t played around with it much myself, so no idea how it works. If it works anywhere near as well as Rainlendar, it should be pretty good, though.
I know the guys at Weatherbug pretty well. And their app is great.
Little known fact - their weather data is pumped in by their own weather stations, and they have more of these than the National Weather Service.
No spyware whatsoever, although the free version does have ads.
Another Weatherbug anecdote…Their alert system sits in the taskbar and will warn you when there is a severe weather advisory. This app is literally a lifesaver and people have been saved from tornadoes by the chirp emitted from their computer when severe weather was on its way.
As an IT Professional[sup]TM[/sup], I hate desktop weather apps and their ilk. I should change my salary structure so that I am paid a certain amount of money for each time I have to uninstall WeatherBug, OoohLookNewSmileys4U and AwwwPuppies&KittensWallpaperFREEdOwNLOAD! from a user’s PC.
Of course, what you do in the privacy of your own home is between you and your hard drive. Personally, I’m looking for a desktop weather app that features a scantily clad chick who will remove articles of clothing as the temperature increases.
BTW: I uninstalled my free WeatherBug about a year ago after getting tired of having to restart it whenever my webbrowser froze. I’m still getting spam from them. Any ideas regarding how to get me off their spam list?
So you’re sure weatherbug doesn’t have any spyware?
I had it several months ago and it tried to take over my computer.
I liked the service, but the whole 'overload C_e’s laptop… that wasn’t fun.
I say BS to this statement. My wife put it on her computer 3 months ago. Within hours he email in box was full of spam and her email account had only been created a few days earlier. I had to use a third party uninstaller to get it off the computer, it would freeze up the computer if you tried to use the imbedded uninstaller program. There is a reason Adaware and Spybot have it listed among the programs they look for when you use them. I had to change her email address to stop the spam.
I signed up for twice daily weather updates from my local ABC television affiliate. I get the local forecast and a link to a weather station located at nearby elementary school.
What THespos says is factually correct. The free version of WeatherBug is adware, not spyware. Not all adware is spyware and vice versa, though for some reason the words are used interchangeably.
Are you using Firefox? If so, you can get an extension called ForecastFox (formerly known as WeatherFox) here for Firefox 1.0 (there’s a drop-down menu that lets you get it for other version too). Highly customizable and useful; I’ve had it for a few months now.
I have WeatherPulse, which has the advantage of not being AdWare. However, it has a very strange definition of ‘severe weather alert’, which includes occasionally announcing a severe weather alert to tell you there is no severe weather. As one benefit, they have fixed the bug that gave off a loud claxon siren every 5 or 10 minutes to announce these alerts (and which continued even if you had read the alert already). Now you can shut the alert sound off.
I suspect it of somehow stealing the attention of my computer so that I’ll be typing along in an input window, and suddenly my machine won’t accept input in that window again until I Alt-Tab to get back to it. But I can’t prove that.
I noticed weatherbug had pretty much the same problem, Chotii. It would be lightly raining outside and I’d get an alert. The rain would stop and the alert would go away.
I installed Weatherbug on my laptop over the Christmas break, and that chirp has been D*** annoying for the last week or so. We had a LOT of snow (6+ inches) followed immediately by a LOT of rain, so it seems like the NWS has been issuing updated flood advisories for our area at least once an hour. AND Weatherbug chirps for each new updated advisory.
I will probably appreciate it more when tornado season comes around again, and I’m down in the windowless basement at work with no radio or TV when a storm comes up. (Wait, I’m already in the tornado shelter then…)
That said, I do like it for the most part, and I can even tolerate the ads that make it free. It is nice at least that I have an idea of what the temperature is outside and whether or not it is raining when I’m down in the windowless basement offices.