http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/index.html
Do you like watching movies on your PC? How about giving presentations on your laptop? Is your laptop like my mom, i.e. falls asleep during movies (and lets not even talk about presentations)?
How about a better question: Did your IT staff configure your screen saver to kick in after 10 or 15 minutes of inactivity? Then I bet you've been frustrated at some point - all the sudden the 'Windows Pipes' screen saver blinks right into the middle of your fiscal 2008 report (or the screen turns off!) - or, you're watching a movie and right at the most suspense filled moment, a marquee marches across your screen: "What would you like to do today?"
The solution? You need to give your computer some caffeine to keep it awake!
This aptly named tiny utility can simulate a left-shift key press once every x seconds of interval, tricking your computer into thinking that there is activity and as such, won't invoke the screen saver or power save mode. The author states that the left-shift key is probably the most unobtrusive keystroke (which I agree) that won't interfere with your applications. That being said, it would be nice to select which keystroke you want to simulate, just in case.
When run, the icon appears in the systray, and that's it - There are no other options other than to make it inactive/active or exit.
When run without any command-line options, Caffeine will simulate a key press once every 59 seconds. You can alter this interval by using the following command-line options:
Caffiene xx -startoff
xx- where xx is a number which sets the number of seconds between simulated keypresses. This must be the first text on the commandline-startoff- if this is found on the commandline, the app starts disabled.
This is probably a good kind of caffeine to get a dose of every day, eh?Check out Tom Revell's website (Zhorn software)...he has a few other useful utilities there to check out as well.
2 comments:
I have forced screensaver+lockout at work and it's pain especially that I often have to launch long non-interactive tasks (other than movies :) ).
I made tiny AutoIt script that shakes mouse cursor (1 pixel and back) every few minutes. Works like a charm.
@Rarst:
:) You and I had similar thought processes - can't find it, write it yourself! I wrote an AutoIt script as well, and I think I even called it 'Jitter' or somesuchthing.
In any case, my problem was with movies, if the computer detected mouse motion, it would bring up the media player controls (and then disappear after awhile).
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