I have always found waking up difficult. I have four alarm clocks: One mechanical wind up, two radio alarms, and my computer alarm.
Computer alarm? Yup. Computer alarm.
The face of a black windup alarm clock (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Why use a computer alarm? Occasionally, I need to change the time I get up to earlier or later depending on the next days events. It is frustrating to configure my radio alarms, they are difficult to use. A computer alarm is just a few clicks from the time being changed.
Also, I can specify what I want the alarm to sound like. On the weekends, I currently have the song “Freeze Frame” played, and week days I wake up to a remix of Vampire Weekend’s “Kids Don’t Stand a Chance”. Choosing songs that cause a feeling of happiness because you like them so much just about makes you want to dance every morning.
The program I use is “Free Alarm Clock“. When I first found it, it sounded suspiciously
Free Alarm Clock Screenshot
like adware or a fake program. But, indeed, it was real — and very useful too.
Free Alarm Clock features the ability to easily change time, specify what days of the week the alarm sounds, and allows you to set multiple alarms, multiple times, and multiple days. In my configuration, I have two alarms: One for week days, and one for weekends.
Each alarm has a few options besides just the time and day. You can specify a message to display, enable “snooze” (you can change the snooze time), specify the audio file to play (or use a included file), the audio volume, and you can also choose whether to loop the file continuously until you hit the button to shut it off. The program runs in the system tray when not in use and keeps out of the way for everyday computing. It is completely free, there are no nag screens or reminders asking to donate.
I have found this program to be very useful. It is available as an installed program or as a portable application. You can read more about Free Alarm Clock on their website:
http://freealarmclocksoftware.com/
The total download size is 1.6MB, the program takes about 5.2MB of memory to run.
