Perhaps my biggest interface pet peeve is alarm clocks in hotels. I stare at the controls for about ten minutes, give up, unplug it, and use my BlackBerry as my alarm clock. I have to unplug it because the last guy might have accidentally set it for 3 AM.
Robert
on 21 Jan 10yeah, I unplug the alarm clock and get a wake-up call.
scott scheper
on 21 Jan 10Even phones aren’t the best alarm clocks. You may get a call at 3am… I know from experience, as probably does everyone else. Recently, I’ve made a move towards eliminating devices that have more than one function (besides computer).
I did a quick search on ebay, but they still were too complex.
I believe Tim Ferris of 4hww had a good idea in using kitchen timers.
Anyone have any good alarm clocks?
flynn
on 21 Jan 10wow… no idea who this scott adams loser is, but if you can’t program a hotel alarm clock, i’m not sure you should be allowed out of the asylum…
Stephen Jenkins
on 21 Jan 10There was a time in my life when I would have sworn that I would never use anything but a tried and true, $5 digital, no-frills alarm clock, with battery backup. This served me well for most of my life, but in the last year I have switched over to the iPhone’s built in alarm clock. I’m not sure why, and there are certainly a lot of things that could go wrong, but it works well for me and I have never missed an appt.
I think this topic was covered on Lifehacker recently, with this product being crowned as the defacto standard in good alarm clocks: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B001U5VKBC/ref=ord_cart_shr?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&v=glance
Matthew Moore Design
on 21 Jan 10I still use an 10+ year old Sony AM/FM alarm, mostly because I know exactly where the snooze bar is without opening my eyes :)
Tactile feedback is important in my sleep aids!
scottdc
on 21 Jan 10There is analarm clock popular with truckers and long-distance motorcyclists called the Screaming Meanie that is definitely a “no-frills” device. You set it for however many hours you want to sleep, like an egg-timer and when it reaches zero it goes off, loudly… Probably too loud for hotel use actually.
kenny
on 21 Jan 10AV Remotes are worse.
Ricky
on 21 Jan 10I get it but at the same time, boo hoo. Either figure the thing out or yes, just unplug it and use your cell phone. And be glad you live in the 21st century so you can have this kind of pet peeve instead sleeping in the woods and getting eaten by a bear. That’s a little known pet peeve a lot of early American pioneer types had.
Jason F
on 21 Jan 10I recently bought one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/Philips-HF3480-Wake-up-Light/dp/B002CGSYPS/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=hpc&qid=1264113449&sr=8-3
I love it. The alarm clock is VERY simple and over a gloomy Seattle winter, the light feature makes getting up in the morning feel like it is Summer again.
My only possible complaint is that the interface is almost a little too minimal and requires a little bit of getting used to before it is second nature.
They also make a version with an iPod doc but I didn’t bother with that since i already have a charge cable on my nightstand.
Paul
on 21 Jan 10A similar comment from yours truly back in 07.
dusoft
on 21 Jan 10scott scheper: have you actually tried to turn your cell phone off? maybe it will come as a surprise to you, but the phone will actually ring the alarm at the set hour :-)))))
Laurel
on 21 Jan 10@dusoft: not an iPhone.
ML
on 21 Jan 10You can put the phone in airplane mode. Then no calls will get thru but you’ll still hear your alarm.
Martial
on 21 Jan 10I used to lose or break my travel clocks at an alarming rate (ha ha). Then, ten years ago, one gloomy day in the Frankfort airport I picked up a simple, ugly, ol’ Casio “Illuminator” (this, but in white).
The damn thing is nigh indestructible and can be dropped from any height, get soaked in the rain or bathtub, survive black mud and duststorms, the battery life can seemingly be reckoned in years, and it is staring balefully at me right now in yet another hotel room. It is absolutely perfect. Its ugliness haunts me. Someday my grandchild will inherit it and damn my soul to hell.
David Andersen
on 22 Jan 10Wow. That’s some serious problem there Scott. I’ve stayed several hundred nights in hotel rooms and never has it accidentally gone off from the prior guest. I suspect almost no one uses them anymore.
Greg
on 22 Jan 10I realize that Scott was exaggerating and being dramatic, but still… He used to be an engineer. I find it hard to believe that an engineer can’t figure out how to set an alarm clock.
@Ricky: Funny comment!
Lubo
on 22 Jan 10@Jason F, Dude, why did you post that link? Now I have to buy one.
Andrew
on 22 Jan 10Pretty much every time I forget to unplug a hotel bedside alarm it goes off at 4 or 5am!
I agree with Scott that even if the controls are pretty good, you’re never 100% sure that it’s off, or more importantly, on - getting up at the correct time after squeezing out as many hours of sleep is pretty important if you’re on a business trip. I guess Scott’s point is that if you’re not 100% sure about the alarm then the clock shouldn’t be there in the 1st place.
Eliot Landrum
on 22 Jan 10This is exactly why some hotel chains have created their own clocks. Here’s an article in 2005 about Hilton replacing all of theirs with a custom clock:
http://www.travellady.com/Issues/August05/1800AlarmClock.htm
Marco Kotrotsos
on 22 Jan 10My biggest interface pet peeve are your ‘next’ and ‘previous’ links on your product blogs. But as a wise man said in Airplane “That is not important right now” :)
What is the use of alarmclocks- i’m alway’s awake before they go off anywayz…
@jason_f…that’s really nice…Is it easy to turn off the alarm for a day? I have an iPod dock thingy (not even sure the make) it takes 5-6 button presses to turn off the alarm…
Natural Light
on 25 Jan 10@Jason f - $133 for an alarm clock…f%#$#$#$k that.
Chris Burd
on 25 Jan 10I have a horror of over-complicated alarm clocks, especially before an early-morning flight. My sleeping mind is never quite convinced that I’ve set it right, and so I wake up ever hour through the night with the panicky feeling that I’ve overslept. My iHome is a particular offender, though it has one unexpected excellent feature: a switch – yes, physical – to go from standard to daylight-savings time and back.
This discussion is closed.