Further to the problem of locking the screen of a Mac:
This article <http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macosxhints/2006/01/lockscreen/index.php> discusses various methods, some with quite a bit of jiggery-pokery. But a very simple solution that I overlooked is this:
But what if you don¹t want to always lock your screen when the screen saver activates or your computer wakes from sleep? In other words, you don¹t want to set that option in the Security pane as you must for the methods I¹ve described so far. (After all, it can be a pain to have to enter your password over and over again throughout the day.) Keychain Access holds the key. You can use this application (in your Applications/Utilities folder) to quickly activate your screen saver from the menubar and require a password to turn it offeven if the Security pane option isn¹t enabled. Open Keychain Access and then go to Keychain Access: Preferences. Click on the General tab and select the Show Status in Menu Bar option. A small lock icon will appear in your menu bar. Close the Preferences window and quit Keychain Access. Now click the lock icon in your menubar and choose Lock Screen to start your screen saver.
Depending upon the size of your screen and the number of items in your menu bar, both from the front-most application and various system menubar icons, the lock icon may or may not be shown. You might have to command-tab to the Finder or some other application with fewer menubar entries to get the lock icon to show.
-- Roger Lovettsville, VA ************************************************************************ * ==> QUICK LIST-COMMAND REFERENCE - Put the following commands in <== * ==> the body of an email & send 'em to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <== * Join the list: SUBSCRIBE COMPUTERGUYS-L Your Name * Too much mail? Try Daily Digests command: SET COMPUTERGUYS-L DIGEST * Tired of the List? Unsubscribe command: SIGNOFF COMPUTERGUYS-L * New address? From OLD address send: CHANGE COMPUTERGUYS-L YourNewAddress * Need more help? Send mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ************************************************************************ * List archive at www.mail-archive.com/computerguys-l@listserv.aol.com/ * RSS at www.mail-archive.com/computerguys-l@listserv.aol.com/maillist.xml * Messages bearing the header "X-No-Archive: yes" will not be archived ************************************************************************