Most seasoned event pros know to set computers to not fall asleep, lock or hibernate during a presentation… this would seem self evident. The last thing that you want is for a speaker to be yammering on and all of a suddent the screen goes from his spiffy PowerPoint Slide to your screen saver which is a picture of a little kitten or even worse, those floating bubbles that bounce around the screen and make me freaking crazy.
Having your laptop go to sleep can be an unnerving experience.
Sometimes it is not possible to prevent, there is no way to change the settings, case in point is a program we just produced for an association. To save costs, a number of municipalities donated the use of their laptops to the program and the one thing that was not possible was changing the settings for sleep or power, it was part of their security protocols and they get audited so they said no way, no can do, the speakers are just going to have to hit the mouse every once in awhile.
Now, for most speakers, this is not an issue, they change slides frequently and are always hitting the clicker to go forward or back, but many either prattled on for 20 minutes or had extensive question and answer segments where the screen sat idle for long periods of time……..BAM, the computers would lock up and it was required that someone enter a password to wake them back up. Not good for the attendee experience….
There are also those times when the screen is idle on purpose. Mornings for example… you have that nifty conference logo on the screen for long periods of time while people are sipping their coffees or noshing on a bagel…………..BAM, there goes the screen…
There is a nifty little app that can fix this, called, appropriately, Mouse Jiggler.. this little app simulates a mouse jiggle every so often so that the computer does not pull its narcoleptic fit.
Now, we all know that having the mouse move can be annoying. For example, if you are on a plane or at the hotel watching a movie and jiggle the mouse, the movie controls pop up…. Ugg, but this little app has something called ZenJiggle which tricks the computer into thinking the mouse has moved without actually moving it. Pretty clever if you ask me…
Here is the link to go get it.
Keith Johnston
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