Good, ad-free, “free free” alarm software is hard to come by. Free Alarm Clock is a 
program written for Windows with a variety of useful features. It has proven to me to be reliable as my daily wakeup alarm for the last 6 months or so.
So, what makes it great?
Several alarms can be easily be set, and it is easy to turn them on and off. I think of this as similar to my iPod’s alarm function. You can also schedule alarms on a daily basis. I use a pretty typical Monday-Friday alarm schedule, but back when I was a student waking up at different times on different days I would have loved this ability.
More important to me, custom alarm sounds can be set. I have my own personal custom alarm that I made: a 12 minute long recording starting with 10 minutes of nature sounds gradually getting louder, followed by a pulsing tone at the end. This works well for me, but I know plenty of people who would prefer to have a music MP3 that makes them want to get up and get moving.
Other useful features:
-This program will wake up a computer from sleep
-This program will turn on the monitor, if you like
-Recordings can be repeated
-There are ample built-in alarms, some more jarring than others
-SNOOZE! A 9 minute snooze can be activated with the press of the spacebar
-Custom alarm volumes for each alarm that return the volume to the previous level after the alarm is off
Free Alarm Clock can be downloaded at:
freealarmclocksoftware.com
A paid version of this program is also available, but it won’t bother you for using the free version.
