OS X Screen Locking Shortcut

When I began administering Macs at work I noticed a feature that has been present in Windows for as long as I can remember but seems to truly be missing from Mac OS X. That is a keyboard short cut for locking the screen when you leave the computer. Sure you can use Exposé’s “Active Screen Corners” to start the screen saver which requires a password, but to people used to using a keyboard that may be a bit awkward. And of course there is also the issue of inadvertently activating the “screen lock” (read: screen saver) by landing your mouse in that particular active corner.

Enter LockTight. This fantastic[ly simple] preference pane provides the exact functionality we have all been looking for! The preference pane is available for both Intel and PowerPC architectures (disregard the filename, both panes on in that same archive). If you are rocking Snow Leopard check out this link for a newly compile version.

The only downside to LockTight is its requirement to use two modifier keys for you shortcut. I believe this is become of some limitation on how shortcuts work in Mac OS X combined with its potential conflict with existing shortcuts. Also, on the subject of WHAT shortcut to setup, I chose to use ⌘+⌥+x become of there proximity to each other. I liked that a little better than the default and have had no conflicts so far.

Hope this helps you out!