Sleep Analyzer

Ostensibly a program to analyze your sleeping patterns and help you discover if there's a problem, SleepAnalyzer doesn't really live up to its billing.

First, the positives. SleepAnalyzer lets you set the volume level at which the program records a snippet of audio. This is meant to allow the recording of only sleep disturbances and not, say, the background fan. Set it at level 20 and you'll get 450 "disturbances" a night. Set it at 400, and you'll get only ten.

The program does successfully record throughout the night. However, analyzing is where it breaks down. First, the slider to move through the disturbances doesn't work, forcing you to page through them one by one, a chore when there are hundreds of them. Second, there doesn't seem to be any point in categorizing each disturbance, as these categories, including cough, sneeze, and snore, have no obvious effect on anything--the nonexistent documentation can't help. Finally, the audio playback starts becoming choppy after playing ten to twenty disturbances, forcing a complete restart of the program.

It's a neat idea, but Excelltech needs to wring several more versions out of SleepAnalyzer before anyone serious about fixing their sleep will get any use out out of it.

--Steve Horton