Eyes Relax 0.87

Overview

EyesRelax is a free utility designed to help you take away the stress imposed on your eyes by hours of working at a computer. Anyone whose work is associated with computers is aware of this problem – sooner or later hundreds of hours you spend in front of a monitor take their toll on your eyes. Irrespective of how expensive your hardware is, your eyes need extra protection if you don’t want to go prematurely blind. An eye strain can cause a large number of health related problems, and eye exercising is the first solution and prevention to those problems.

EyesRelax reminds you to take a short break from work and look at distant objects to relieve eye strain, thus giving your eye muscles necessary exercise to keep them healthy and fit. Besides, relaxing your sight at regular intervals may give an additional boost to your productivity because very often we lose concentration when we forget to give ourselves short breaks from working too hard.

The developer of this nifty tool initially created the code in 2008 for himself because he needed it. The utility has experienced a lot of updates and improvements following user feedback. It is a great thing developers share this sort of software for free with anyone who might need it to take care of their health. It is lightweight, non-intrusive, and it does the job. What else can you request of it?

Installation

The installer comes clean from bundles, toolbars, Adware or nag screens. Eyes Relax also has a portable version which stores user profile in the program’s directory. The program requires Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 to be installed.

Interface

EyesRelax has a clean-cut and extremely intuitive interface. The layout is simple and offers a number of settings users can configure. Users can specify the working time and the duration of the breaks, as well as sound and image notification that would accompany the breaks. Users can create several accounts and customize their settings accordingly. EyesRelax also gives you the opportunity to set a password for your profile and turn on parental control which will give you an opportunity to control that your kids take breaks from learning and playing with the computer.

Pros

Eyes Relax is extremely simple and intuitive, but it offers a number of customization options to tweak the program according to your needs and preferences. Password protection and parental control features make a valuable addition to this handy free utility. During Parent Mode, the computer is locked for the pauses so basically your children will be forced to take those breaks from the computer while the break is due. You can also set the mode for yourself if you feel that is the only way you can make yourself take a short break. You can also disable Task Manager, so that your kids do not outsmart you by closing the app from there.

Eyes Relax offers a complete freedom in user configurations of time for work, short and long breaks, as well as notifications. You can adjust the color of the window, or make the app display the image or a slideshow from your folders. The program supports most common image formats: jpg, gif, bmp and png. In addition, you can have your favorite music turned on at the time of the break because the program supports wav and mp3 format, as well as allows you to adjust the volume for the audio file.

Cons

Eyes Relax is rather powerful and easy to use for a free application, and we could not identify any drawbacks for its current edition.

Alternatives

Workrave is an open source app fro Windows and Linux-based operation systems designed to help users recover from or prevent the RSI, Repetitive Strain Injury. EyeDefender is a free application for Windows designed to remind users to take short breaks from working at their computers, thus prevent Computer Vision Syndrome, CVS, or blurred vision, eye strain or delayed focusing. FadeTop is also free of charge and helps Windows users remember to make short pauses to give their eyes a second chance with a long and healthy life. Time Out and AntiRSI are also free applications, but for Mac users.

Conclusion

We find Eyes Relax a valuable addition to any user’s toolkit. It is lightweight; it runs in the background and controls the time you spend working, or your kids playing. When the pause time comes, it can either remind you to take a break, or block your monitor for the time you initially specified. Users of all levels will sort out this little app in no time. We definitely recommend you install it for your health’s sake.