Awaken vs. Aurora

With version 3 of Aurora released just the other day, and Awaken 3’s release not too long ago, I thought I’d stack the two up, in case you’re wondering, “What alarm should I be using?”
As far as features go, they both can do mostly the same things. They both work very well with iTunes, letting you pick from playlists or podcasts to wake up. They’ll also both allow you to wake the computer, even if you’re using a password, so you won’t sleep through your alarm. They’ll also both handle the volume, in case you’ve turned your volume down in the middle of the night with your apple remote.
Both also work well with recurring alarms, which can be great if you’ve got a job or classes at the same time every day, no more worries about setting your alarm every night, and accidently setting it for PM instead of AM.
Pretty much all the same useful features are there, so what’s the big difference? Price and interface. Aurora is free, and Awaken is pretty. I have to say, I love the way Awaken looks. Clearly a lot of time has been spent with designers(especially the icon by Hugo van Heuven), but for a program that essentially is just going to wake me up in the morning, I can’t really justify dropping $8.95, when I’ve got another program that’ll do it all for free. So my pick is
Aurora, but if you’re feeling like checking out a very pretty mac app, Awaken does work as a free trial.