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Laptop Anti-Theft Devices
mathin writes: "The NYTimes has an interesting article about laptop theft 'alarms' and services to help track down your laptop if it's swiped." Laptops are a lot like bicycles: if you have a 50-pound laptop, it doesn't need a lock.
MI5 brought a few trackers so they can find where their pissed agents left them...
50-pound computers are what we here in the industry call "desktops".
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I have this vision of a stripped laptop on cinderblocks.
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One of the big issues here is the things that are on the hard drive rather than the actual physical laptop.
I remember a few years back when me and a few friends were continuously scared of getting a knock on the door from the authorities, we had ideas to develop a device to entirely wipe the hard drive.
Initially, this consisted of a coil of thick guage copper wire around the HD, which was in turn connected across the mains supply. Guaranteed to fuck over the HD big time.
Problem was, that we never had the guts to put one round our main HD, because we knew that whatever mechanism used, it could get accidently turned on.
We also worried about, if the police did turn up, how would we know whether it was a friendly visit or not, then wipe or HDs for no reason.
All because of the anarchists cookbook and about 10 porn pictures.....
Excellent news ... as we know, audio alarms and tracking bugs have totally eliminated theft in the automobile industry, and I imagine these devices will do the same for laptops.
That is definitely a situation in which tracking would not have helped.
Perhaps a fear of the unit having a tracking device is what made the thief steal only the components? Now that would be ironic...
If your laptop is 50 pounds, it's not really a laptop, is it?!
You don't know how big his lap is.
I believe the code was actually "Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A-Start" (For unlimited lives in Contra on the original Nintendo.
Reality has a liberal bias
Was your laptop sitting in a bathtub full of ice with a note on the windshield telling you to call 911?
My wife has a Pismo G3 from her employer, whose IT department bought her a Targus laptop bag with the order because "We do it for all Laptop orders". Never mind the fact that the bag was obviously made to fit a boxy PC laptop, not the curvy Pismo. Ultimately, she found a backpack with a laptop compartment built in, and bought it herself. She's willing to trade the fact that her laptop bag doesn't look "Professional" (read: pretentious) for the fact that nobody knows its a laptop bag. Nobody's stolen it yet....
And the Targus laptop bag is sitting somewhere on a spare desk in her department. Nobody else wants to use it, either.
I'm very very happy with Targus -- not just the quality, but also the support (broke the strap two years after getting the bag, they sent a new, improved strap, for free).
The big drawback to Targus bags is that they are heavy. That is also their strength, as the bag takes a lot of abuse, saving the laptop inside from harm.
Speaking of a good way to keep a laptop from being stolen is to not put it in a bag that screams, "There's a laptop in this bag!" , I have a pile of clean old Compaq laptop bags without the laptops...
These bags scream "There is a Compaq Laptop in this bag!", though there isn't -- I give them to family members to use as briefcases, lunch bags, and even keep one in the back of my truck to hold my jumper cables.
Nobody has stolen my jumper cables or my nieces schoolbooks... yet.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Gosh, I'll bet you felt silly!
My home was recently burgerarized and to my surprise they left two good laptops, i feel that the risk of the next owner (pawn shop) discovering the previous owner (me), via software registration/registry entries, scared 'em off. Of course the thiefs would not be familiar with high end concealment tools such as fdisk and format.
they did steal my laptop case to carry off the contents of my change jar, damn crackheads.