Slashdot Mirror
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.
The majority of the companies I work with use capital insurance policies to cover the cost of replacing stolen equipment. With the proliferation of anti-theft devices, will insurance companies take the automobile route and provide discounts for using them? Or will they begin to require such devices to provide coverage at all?
A couple of years ago, I bought a brand new laptop. I went into a store for a couple of minutes and left my month old laptop sitting on the seat of my car, door unlocked (stupid, I know), knowing I would only be gone for a couple minutes.
When I got back home, I tried to boot up and nothing happened after the fan kicked on. After a couple of minutes of jiggling the power cord wire, I opened the case and found that my processor was stolen along with my two 64MB ram units. Someone had bothered to open it up, take the stuff, and close it again
That is definitely a situation in which tracking would not have helped.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
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?"
Pogue's article had some great things to say about the technology of tracking down stolen laptops. It would have been good to make the point that, many times, the information on the laptop is worth far more than the laptop itself.
About 18 months ago Qualcomm's CEO had his laptop swiped during a conference. The laptop was thought to have all kinds of trade secrets. Losing a several-thousand dollar laptop was a trivial loss for the CEO. But shareholders were rightfully worried that Qualcomm's strategies for implementing CDMA rollout were now in the hands of rivals. To my knowledge, they never got the laptop back. And the theft was, I suspect, for the hard drive's trade secrets rather than for the actual laptop.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
this statistic was startling:
As many as 30 percent of the stolen laptops are gone for good because they are never used to go online after being stolen.
Never mind that If I had a system like that I would just wipe the drive to begin with. Of course, common crooks may not bother.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
That has got to be the most easily comprimised password method ever!
you: Tilt left - right - back to arm laptop, and leave...
you : come back and tilt laptop right - back - left
Person outside looking in sees you do this and comes in and takes your laptop, disarming it with your (super secret password tilt combo) while you feel secure cause you spent a hundred dollars on a security device.
what a joke, that method shouldn't even exist, too many stupid users are gonna use it.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
I have this vision of a stripped laptop on cinderblocks.
Best Slashdot Co
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.
True story:
I was working in a corner of a cafe late at night when I guy came in, sat beside me, stuck a knife to my side and said "put the laptop in the bag".
My laptop was locked to the table, but I gladly unlocked it in return for my safety.
Anyway, insurance covered the loss.
Also, I had a removable hard drive with all my work on it, and I pleaded with the thief to let me keep it, and he let me!
So ultimately, I ended up with a newer machine, and a spare drive, and the thief ended up with a password protected laptop. Just goes to show, crime doesn't pay.
-... ---
If your laptop is 50 pounds, it's not really a laptop, is it?!
You don't know how big his lap is.
IBM has the right idea. In some (all?) of their laptops, the main board and hard drive have passwords that can't be disabled or bypassed without major surgery. If you forget the password, tough, the subassembly must be replaced. If this was more common, laptops would be less attractive to thieves.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If you don't want your laptop stolen, don't ever let it get into a situation where it can be stolen, because (people being what they are) it will be. And if you think you absolutely can't live without your laptop, do yourself a favour and evaluate what you actually mean by that. Chances are you'll find it's simply not true.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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.