[atomicbartbeans]

Okay, so I live with 3 other people, none of them altogether trustworthy (I'm especially suspicious of those so-called 'parents'). What I need is a way to lock my screen when I'm out of the room (bathroom, school, trips to Apple Store, FFXI parties, the occasional date, eating, etc.) so people don't sit down and start talking to my buddies, using my bandwidth, reading my email, and making a complete mess of things while I'm AFK. In the past, I've tried these options to prevent unwanted access:

1. Switch to login window (using FUS)
2. Screen Saver
3. Sleep
4. Log Out

I'd like to avoid 1, because FUS uses lots of RAM (and I don't want people logging into the guest account while I have tasks running). Also, the damned menu bar plugin takes up an enormous amount of space. 2 would be ideal, if it weren't for the fact that whenever the screen saver activates, it messes up my ColorSync settings (makes everything all blue), which is a royal pain in the ass. 3 and 4 are out of the question, because then it logs me out of AIM and stops folding.

So, I'm looking for a simple way to lock the screen. It would be nice if it was easy to activate, like a key command, menu item, or screen corner. It must prevent use of my iBook while it's activated (while still allowing background tasks), and it must ask for my password before restoring normality. I'm envisioning a nice, big lock icon with a black background. Is there anything like this for OS X?

[Brad]

I'd go with option 1... but why do you even have a guest account enabled if you don't want people using it?

Also, the damned menu bar plugin takes up an enormous amount of space.

Are you using 10.4? On 10.4, you can change it to an icon and it's no bigger than the little Spotlight icon.

[BlueRabbit]

I use the screen saver on a screen corner. It's really fast. I'm not sure how to solve the problem of the Colorsync settings, though. Maybe it's just the particular screen saver you're using? If so, you should be able to make your own (a lock icon) pretty easily.

[atomicbartbeans]

Yes, that's currently what I'm using... a screen corner with the screensaver. I've tried dozens of screensavers though, and all of them have the problem. About half the time you exit the screensaver, everything is all blue, and one must go to Display Preferences and select "Color LCD" to get things back to normal. This problem simply won't go away.