Alarm

Toshiba laptops provide an alarm power on function. Depending on your model you can set a time and date on which the laptop will automatically power on. This can be used in a variaty of interesting ways to power on the laptop at specific times at which point a program can be scheduled to run.

You might use this for example to have your laptop resume from a suspend and then automatically dial up and collect your emails so that when you get up they are automatically ready to read.

The alarm program provides a command line utiltiy that can be used to set the alarm power on time/date under Linux. The time/date is specified using the same syntax as the at command.

Their are two points to remember if using the alarm power on function. Firstly the alarm power on will only happen once, so if you want it to work on a daily basis then any scripts you run will need to reset the alarm power on time. Secondly if you have the panel power on/off functionality enabled and the is panel closed, immediately after powering on it will power down/suspend again.