Personally I press Ctrl
The “any” key, of course.
I prefer catarel.
Usually space
I mash space bar! At work I mash Ctrl alt delete
Same here. Whenever I need to wake up my PC I send it on a suborbital spaceflight. The forces of launch and reentry move the mouse a lot and it wakes up once I recover it from the ocean.
I move the mouse.
My computer always drops the first character or two when waking, making me screw up my password. So I wiggle the mouse and by the time my hand is back on the keyboard I can type my password with confidence.
At work I just start typing the password. Sometimes I am faster than the screen coming back to life
ESC
Can’t believe I had to scroll this far. Always Escape!
Space
Space key. That way it won’t accidentally enter an actual letter or command that could be passed to the current active application.
That’s not really much of a problem anymore these days (serious issue in WinXP era), but it’s still the safe key, so I use it.
Edit: I totally botched this. I meant Shift key. Derp.
Space bar is “accept” in many interfaces. If the screen was off but not locked, and a dialog box was focused, hitting space will submit that in some OS.
Control, on the other hand, won’t.
I always wake up with space and I have had that problem once. That was on a PC that was installing using PXE.
Otherwise my PC is pretty much always locked if the screen has gone to sleep.
I remember one time when I was a youth trying to fix my dad’s computer, he tried to wake it with the space bar. The screen came on and that space bar cancelled some long running operation. Woops.
I like ctrl as well.
Less alarming and obtrusive. To the computer? For me?
I prefer left Ctrl, but will press the right ctrl if I’m feeling wild that day.
This is a great question.
I love them question.
I’m a left CTRL grill. It doesn’t press things that might input text or navigate. It’s a humble modification-key.
Shift because it can’t trigger an action on its own.
<Tinfoil hat>
Using space, enter, control, or alt can trigger functions in windows if another key is stuck for a weird reason.
</Tinfoil hat>Me too for same reason. Also I am shifting the computer out of being asleep (ok I made that up)
Spacebar
Arrow keys
I press the down arrow key!
Left for me
qwerdsffyjiluiop;hjmdb
sfg [waggle mouse] qqwthr
Mouse wiggles
That’s just uncivilised.
It’s optimal
Space, because I enjoy chaos.
I shake the mouse then start entering my login before the screen turns on, works 50% of the time.
ctrl is the only correct choice obviously. it’s the only key that does nothing by itself and it’s positioned at a corner so it’s hard to mistype
Whatever method gets the job done is fine but this is the most correct answer.
