Cool alarm clock feature. Though I do agree with my wife, who argues that someone, somewhere really needs to make an alarm clock with a number pad so you can direct-enter the time instead of scrolling through hours and minutes. (I once had one with a circular arrangement of numbers that included each of the hours in one circle and five-minute increments in another. Very clumsy, but it was still easier than scrolling.)
Yeah, but a number pad is tough to manage in the dark.
Voice recognition might be the best bet at this point, possibly only having the clock listen when a button is pressed.
Best alarm clock I ever had:
http://kisrael.com/viewblog/?date=2003.07.15
I got one a while back, mostly because it played CDs, but it has that same feature, nice big face and a constant display of the alarm time. The surprising thing was the usability of the time setting function. You set the time/alarm much the same way as other clocks. Hit "alarm set" and then click hours, then click minutes. But the is a colossal difference in usability between this one and the old cheap LED style clocks. First of all, the controls are on a touch screen, so there is no effort required, and click once for "alarm set mode" rather than holding the "alarm set" button. So you just "tap, tap tap" and the alarm is set. It always felt like there was great physical effor to hold those little mechanical buttons on the old clocks, so even without a number pad, the usability is up an order of magnitude.