On the most basic level, KAlarm is an alarm clock with multiple alarms. It goes way beyond that but this is a good place to start. Unlike organizer tools such as KOrganizer, it just deals with alarms.

Let's look at some possible applications. My trash day is Thursday. If I get to the computer before I take out the trash (a common event) then I typically forget until I hear the truck coming down the street. What I need is a big red flag and a constant beep that come on on Thurday at 7AM and doesn't go away until I tell them to go away.

This is a perfect KAlarm job. Here is what I need to do to set this up.

• Bring up KAlarm either from the menus or using Alt-F2 and entering kalarm. You will see a window similar to this.

• Click on Actions and select New. A new window shows up.

• Under action, you can select text (for a text message) and type in "take out trash", check sound, click on the note and select a sound file and then check repeat.
• In the time section, select AT date/time and pick the date and time for the first alarm.
• Click on Try to see and hear what you get.

• If you are not happy with the result, edit away chainging the sound, background color, font and text color.
• Once you are happy, click on the Recurrence tab, select Weekly and then select Thursday.
• Click on Ok and you are set.

You will be taken back to the original window but you will see your event added there.

I have added a second event called "Beer Time" at 6PM every day. The only tricky thing is that I wanted this to be daily but only Monday thru Friday. This is easily handled by selecting Weekly and then selecting the five days I want the event to happen on.

Any of these events can be edited or deleted by right-clicking on them in this window. Right-clicking in this window is another way to add new events.

This is a very basic look at KAlarm. Actions are not limited to a text message in a colored box and include the ability to run other programs. The important thing is that KAlarm is there to help and makes a nice, convenient place to organize these basic events.