All great points, I would add one more:
forget the alarm clock. If you can afford a variation of 30 mins - 1hour in wake up time, get up when you wake up naturally. Access to natural sunlight in the morning is best.
It's amazing how precisely wake-up times synchronize automatically, but I find the alarm clock really really harmful. See this for a strong opinion: http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm
There are plenty of alarm clocks available that either fade in ocean noises (or similar), or will play an MP3 that you upload (and you can choose something like that -- slowly fading in white noise).
I actually generally agree with the advice -- my wife and I only use the alarm clock when we have some kind of morning appointment or travel -- but in that case the one we have works well -- it gradually increases the lights and fades in the "alarm" (mostly white noise), and it's gentle enough that when only one of us needs to get up, it's pretty rare that it wakes both of us, just the one who's "primed" to wake up unusually early. And it never wakes the baby (who sleeps in the bed with us).
So yeah, any kind of "jolt" alarm clock is a really bad way to start the day, but they're still useful devices (and waking to an alarm doesn't need to be so painful).
If you don't have that luxury, Sleep Cycle is a pretty good iPhone app for waking up. It attempts to learn your sleep phases via the accelerometer and wakes you up during the closest light sleep period to your alarm time.
