Time Doctor: So close, SOO SOO close! Just needs more intelligent screenshots!
Overall Satisfaction with Time Doctor
I used Time Doctor as a freelancer to keep track of what I was working on and how long I was working on it. The biggest part of Time Doctor that I utilized was the screenshots because it captured not just what apps were open but what I was DOING in those apps. For instance, I may have been using LogMeIn to work on a sales person's computer, but the screen shots allowed me to see that I was fixing their email.
Pros
- (Virtually) unlimited screenshot storage
- Built in time tracking and cost tracking
- Time efficiency tracking
Cons
- Screenshots were taken at regular intervals but not necessarily relevant, found a competing product which didn't just take screenshots while active but took them as things changed. So an email I read for 10 mins didn't have 5 screenshots but the moment I switched to Chrome it took a new screenshot.
- This product seems good for business OWNERS but not freelancers. I needed to be able to track time and then invoice it. It felt more like Time Doctor was designed to gather the time and cost info and then I use that info in other ways (i.e. cut an employee a check or put the info in QuickBooks).
- The negative aspects of "Time wasted" actually felt demeaning. While it is in fact "time wasted", steering away from the negative terminology would be less off-putting like saying "Unproductive Time".
- There was MAJOR cost benefit in being able to see what I was spending my time on as a freelancer, forgetting I worked on something means time I couldn't bill the customer for doing.
- Documenting my work for long periods of time was occasionally useful, i.e. seeing what work I did with a particular application over the past few weeks.
- ActivTrak and TimeCamp
TimeCamp works well for tracking time spent but does a poor job at automatic categorization. It's free for tracking application usage (by window title only though). ActivTrak logs screenshots PERFECTLY but the space limitation and extremely high cost make it difficult to absorb. When you hit your max, all your data is hidden until you delete ALL your screenshots for a particular user which may be a user you need to check. The cost is absurdly high on this, makes Time Doctor more attractive option.
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