How do I turn my laptop into an alarm clock?

[Grand Inquisitor]

I like starting off the day on the right foot, just like everyone else.  I have much more media available on my laptop than anywhere else for this type of thing.  I expected that with all the advances in computing and free software that I could find an application that turns my laptop into an alarm clock.  So far everything I've found has been adware or junk.

Does anyone know applications that will allow you to set a time to start playing MP3 (et al) files?  How do these work if your computer goes into hibernate overnight or whatever?


Thanks.

[Schonkreuz]

I use http://bluefive.pair.com/alarm.htm . you can set your own song or use the annoying tone thing they offer.

[Harlequin]

In WinXP you can do Start > Program > Accessories > System Tools > Schedule Task...

Click the icon labled "Add Sceduled Task"
From there click Next, browse out to whatever file you want to run and click next
You can fly right through those options because you can edit any of them eventually click next next next and get to finish.

Now you can edit that task. 

On the schedule screen you can set up how it runs, "Weekly" is neat because you can set it up to only trigger on certain days of the week (like M-F if you're a 9-5 grunt like myself).  On the Settings tab is where you can control the "Power Management" setting, the one you want is "Wake the computer to run this task"  (I think its checked off by default). 

There's alot of neat features.


By doing some quick Google research into .bat files, you can see some really cool stuff you could do.  A .bat file is like a little mini program.  Basically if you opened notepad and put something like...

START http://www.themanadrain.com/
START wakeupsong.mp3


And then saved that into something like "Alarm.bat"  you could have your task run Alarm.bat (as opposed to making a bunch of tasks on the same timer).

[oneofchaos]

I always have wild international by one day as a lion playing.  Nothing is a better wakeup.