If you’re a stranger to Awaken, let me tell you what it does. Basically, Awaken is a simple application which sets alarms to either pause or play your iTunes. It’s extremely useful if you’d like to wake up to some funky songs in the morning; or to go bed with soothing music in the background, knowing that your Mac will turn itself off when the time is right. Sounds like a great application, doesn’t it? The only problem is: it costs $12.95. I’m not a cheap person but I’m still not willing pay $13 just to have some music played to me in the morning or before I go to bed.

For several years I’ve been taking my private laptop to work, like most of my colleagues. Often I’m asked to set up a laptop for a guest talk, and many times I had to provide my own computer for the presentation.

Frankly, I hate to share my own, private laptop, however for a long time it was inevitable. Over that time people lost respect and thought it was OK to use my computer, just to look something up real quick.

It annoyed me to no end, so I unconsciously developed a few strategies to make it very unattractive to use my laptop. Let me share…
1) No Desktop Icons