The usual case of "goes wildly out" for PC clocks is the sudden loss of exactly 60 seconds per minute: i.e. your battery's dead and the clock stopped. Now "clock instablility" on that order of magnitude can actually interfere with a lot of good things one expects from a PC.

But I will confess to checking the 'puter clock when I need to reset all the house timers after a power drop. I have an old multiband radio that I usually leave set on WWV for "close checks" - sort of out of nostalgia for pre-binary days; but for some reason it seems reception is always really bad just after the power comes back up.

Those who have cell phones may be aware that many of them default to "adjust the time of day" off the 'phone system sync clock; but even Mickeysoft warns that "phone time ain't internet time." If your cell phone time synchronizes periodically, it's probably good enough for an initial reset of your PC clock in an emergency, but one shouldn't worry if the synchronized PC time and synchronized cell phone times are a minute or so out of sync with each other.

John