'Snooze Only When Man Bites Alarm Clock

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Jus’ dunno ‘bout Cecil these days. Clearly he has no faith in the depth of thinking of engineers. But what’s worse is that when someone asks him why something is – like why all snooze alarms, on electronic devices having waking capability, are fixed at a 9-min of timeout – he jus’ go ahead ‘n’ believe what de fella tell 'im. Den 'e come up wid a reason for de 9 min. Hey, but de trouble is: Dey ain’t no 9 min in dem things today!

I just surfed the Web with AltaVista and got the results listed below, as to how many minutes are designed into snooze alarms today. Of those devices that stated their snooze-alarm times, NOT ONE QUOTED 9 MINUTES! Almost all that mentioned their timeouts said they were either 8 min or 5 min. One watch said its snooze time was only 1 min! A software program for a PC said it could be set for any time from 1 to 59 min! Cecil, YA BLEW IT! You gotta start havin’ more respect fer injunears. Check out the data stated below, at the sites stated therewith.

And, also, let us not forget to recall Jerry Seinfeld’s quite-to-the-point evaluation of the snooze alarm:

“If any invention marks the decline of human civilization, I think it would be the snooze alarm. The snooze alarm is based on the idea that when the alarm goes off, you’re not getting up…They should sell the snooze alarm with an unemployment application and a bottle of tequila. Just make it a complete pathetic-loser kit.”

The below are only a small portion of electronic devices advertised on the Web which have snooze alarms.

Ray (ex-EE who uses just an old analog electric clock with a raucous alarm and no snooze button)

http://www.tdc.org.hk/prodmag/electron/ele199807pf.htm

http://store.yahoo.com/netmkt/846793-4450066-gdgt-std.html

http://www.hammacher.com/DefaultPage/default.asp?ContentPage=/publish/63469.htm

http://store.yahoo.com/cc1534/radcloc.html

http://www.theriver.com/cpd/new-organizers.htm

http://www.suttertel.com/clockradio

http://www.rmk-accessories.com/apogeangear/essentials.html

http://www.instrumentmart.com/clocks/cti278bl.html

http://www.neosoft.com/~nds1/lasermiscpointers.html

http://www.catalogcloseouts.com/mall/nd29.asp

http://www.huger.de/katalog/chrono/pr08/epr.htm

http://www.hitec.com/nadc/busns/clocks.html

http://www.tradesources.com.hk/html/TSP/wp/w9801cs/w9801cs.html

http://www.rjsoftware.com/index.html http://www.rjsoftware.com/history.html

(edited for length)
[Note: This message has been edited by JillGat]

2

BTW, the subject SD column here (Why all snooze alarms have 9-min timeouts), which appeared in the Nov. 26 East Bay Express (Berkeley, CA-US), is not yet posted at this site.

Ray

3

My alarm clocks, both here and at school have a nine minute snooze time.

4

None of NanoByte’s links worked, here’s the fixed one…
http://store.yahoo.com/netmkt/846793-4450066-gdgt-std.html
http://store.yahoo.com/cc1534/radcloc.html
http://www.suttertel.com/clockradio
http://www.instrumentmart.com/clocks/cti278bl.html
http://www.catalogcloseouts.com/mall/nd29.asp
http://www.hitec.com/nadc/busns/clocks.html
http://www.rjsoftware.com/index.html
http://www.rjsoftware.com/history.html

5

Once again, somebody’s research does not jive with the reality of my personal experiences. The last four clock/radios I’ve owned all had a pre-set 9 minute snooze.

As much as I’d love to join NanoByte in cutting the Master down to size, my personal experience confirms Cecil’s assumption.

As for engineers, I sing their praises everytime I have to remove the entire front grill of my car just to change a headlight!

6

Same here. My Dream Machine™ has a 9 minute snooze.

7

G.E., about five years old. Seven minutes.

8

Methinks NanoByte may be confusing the Snooze button (which one pushes when the alarm goes off in the morning in order to take the most satisfying 9 minutes of sleep of the night) with the Sleep timer (which one could use to fall asleep to music and set for any time between 1 minute and 59 minutes).

9 minutes on my clock radio.

Plunging like stones from a slingshot on Mars.

9

When I first read this I wondered how everyone knew exactly how long their snooze period lasted. Did they go time it? Do they still have the manuals for the alarm clocks? Great memories of triva(believable)? What?

Then it hit me. They must oversleep a lot.

10

I have a travel alarm clock with a 4 minute snooze, and man, is it annoying! I’ve barely got my eyes shut again before it goes off!

11

Firstly, let me just say the 3 alarm clocks I currently own all have 9-minutes snooze alarms.

Secondly, I asked this very same question some time back in the GQ message board area, but I can’t turn it up on the search. Does the search only go back about a month or so? Is my snooze alarm thread lost forever?

12

My alarm clock’s snooze is 7 minutes. I typically go 2-5 snooze cycles before I am even awake enough to know that I am hitting the damn snooze bar…

13

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/991126.html

BTW, I have a Panasonic clock-radio. 7 minutes.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

14

I use my pager. It goes off once, for 20 seconds.
I get up.

My girlfriend, however, hits her (I thought 15 minute) snooze every 15 minutes for an hour or two.
I just can’t understand why people don’t just set their alarm later. Why wake yourself before you’re planning to get up anyway?

You know, I’m going to check her clock to see if it’s really 15 minutes…

15

I have a sony CD alarm clock, and the snooze setting is 8 minutes. I have never had an alarm clock (and I have had a few) that had a nine minutes setting.

16

I have a sony CD alarm clock, and the snooze setting is 8 minutes. I have never had an alarm clock (and I have had a few) that had a nine minutes setting.

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” --Whitman

17

My Sony DreamMachine has an 8-minute snooze, but more importantly (right, like it matters), it does count AC cycles. This is in reply to the comment in Point 6 (“Engineer’s comment: Nice try, bub, but clocks don’t count that way.”).

I lived in England for a while, and on my move there, took my alarm clock, plus transformer, thinking I was covered. Nope. Everything seemed to work, but I quickly realized that every minute was exactly 50 seconds long! I converted the voltage (110-220) but couldn’t do anything about the frequency (60Hz-50Hz). So, I used my Sony as a radio, and bought a travel alarm clock.

From experience, the voltage may vary, but they are strict about the frequency.

18

It seems to me that Cecil was talking about several generations of clocks and making it fit into a reasonable length article. If it’s mechanical, it isn’t counting cycles. If, in England or lot’s of other countries, it goes to 50 minute hours, then it is counting cycles. If it can keep time through even a short black out, then it’s not counting cycles. It’s probably got a DC power supply with an oscilator and maybe even a battery. DC circuitry is much cheaper, so it would seem that most of the modern clocks would use it. As far as length of the snooze, well I don’t even set an alarm, I wake up with the dawn, but, then again, I work for myself so I don’t get punished for oversleeping either.

19

Hey, Ursa…the word is “jibe”, not “jive”. “Jive” is a Black English dialect word meaning “to bullshit, to lay a story on”. I think you meant to say that nano’s research doesn’t “jibe” with your personal experience.

20

Did exhaustive :slight_smile: research this morning on this subject. Stayed in bed an extra hour to hit my snooze alarm. It went off exactly every nine minutes.

If only I could install a snooze button on my cat.