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RFID for Laptop Inventory Tracking?
An anonymous reader asks: "We are in the process of getting new laptops and I was wondering if anyone has used RFID for inventory control of them? Like many places laptops have had a way of going MIA. In an ideal world I would like to be able to get a 'real time' update of where the tags are located. I also would like to know when a RFID tag goes by a fixed location such as a door.
What are people's experience both good and bad with RFID? Is this realistic? Where do I start? Had this been done with open-source?"
They approached Michael Dell about installing at the factory. He doesn't want them as 1000's of laptops are stolen every year, requiring replacements..... Hmm, Profit Motive?
As I imagine the theifs aren't using them to give venture capital proposals, it also means thousands of stolen laptops that get sold at very low prices, taking away some potential Dell sales.
That may help for laptops for personal use, but you can often read in the newspaper about a social engineeri just walking into some business, and getting the receptionists to help him steal 20 laptops. And considering even though PHBs only use their laptops to check email, as a status symbol the PHB usually orders the most expensive laptop possible. :) Not too many thieves target the iBook(or at least that is my wishful thinking!)
My laptop anti-theft devices are
a) I'm a poor college student and I dress like one
b) I carry it around in a beaten up(on the outside) backpack, but one with a lot of padding.
c) my final line of defense is the laptop itself, an all white little clamshell with a glowing white apple on the other side of the screen
My workplace is doing inventory right now. The have bar codes on every monitor and CPU, but not keyboards, mice, or speakers. Laptops have a single barcode on the laptop itself, but none of the accessories.
It seems to work pretty well. They come in with a handheld bar code scanner, scan the bar codes, key in the branch we're in, and move on to the next cube/office. If the range of those RFIDs is as short as you say, they offer no advantage over old-fashioned bar codes - you still have to get near the equipment to check it.
--RJ
It's a thought, but whenever someone reboots, has their system go to sleep, or shuts it down, it's going to look like it's disappeared.
You'd want to use a seperate tracking system than something that runs only when the system is operating.
Oh, and I'd have personally recommended Bluetooth as opposed to some 802.11 implementation -- as you can get distance estimates between two nodes (I have no idea how accurate they are, though). And of course, it has the same problem with not being on when the computer's not on.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Why buy RFID tags? These 1. cost money 2. only work within a few feet. Instead install a Distributed.net client. They have caught thiefs before. Of course if the hard drive is wiped or replaced, it won't but how many lazy thiefs would do that?