ON Computers
BOB & JOY SCHWABACH
When times turn down, theft turns up. After cash and jewellery, the most valuable portable objects may be notebooks.The cheapest way to guard a notebook from theft is chain it to a post. In fact, special cable locks, much like the ones for bicycles, are made for just that purpose. They cost about $30. Most notebook come with a socket on the side that fits one end of these anti-theft cable locks. Once locked, you can't remove that computer without smashing it to bits.
Then there's "LoJack". This is a recovery system initially designed to find stolen cars. But now there's "LoJack for Laptops." If you declare your notebook stolen, it begins reporting its location every 30 minutes, through the Internet.
A special feature of this system is that the owner can flag sensitive files. When you identify a notebook as stolen, a signal is sent over the Internet to delete those files. Just before deletion, the files are transmitted to the software company's storage banks, where you can collect them.
There are ways to disable LoJack, however. If a thief is knowledgeable, they can enter commands that will nullify the program's ability to call home. If the LoJack software comes pre-installed on a new computer, however, the company says it is nearly impossible to disable. That's because changes are made to the BIOS settings (the Basic Input/Output System). Of course, if you really know what you're doing, you can replace the BIOS.
What happens most often in the real world, however, is what employers call "PC drift." The computer's not really stolen, they just don't know where it is.
LoJack service costs $40 a year and you can get it at LojackForLaptops.com. A premium edition of the software costs $60 and pays the user up to $1,000 if they can't recover the notebook or failed to delete the sensitive information. (Small comfort.)
Identity theft
Sometimes it's not enough to have anti-virus and anti-spyware apps. If you have personal information stored on your computer, only the dumbest thieves would miss it. That personal information, in fact, may be the reason they're stealing the computer.
We tried out a new program called IdentityFinder that scours your computer for anything personal and then encrypts it with a click or two. It automatically looks for data saved by Internet Explorer, Firefox, Outlook Express, Outlook and Windows Mail, along with all of your Microsoft Office documents and PDFs. Among the things considered personal are social security numbers, phone numbers, bank codes, anything financial or medical, passwords, etc.
It found over 350 sensitive items on Joy's computer, including credit card numbers and passwords. It looks for those automatically, and you can add others, like your mother's maiden name or anything else you consider private. You can save all your passwords in a "password vault," that is itself encrypted by a master password not saved on your computer. Hang on to that password.
The program is $25 for home users, $35 for small businesses. More info at identityfinder.com.
High tech for low dough
High tech is getting really high tech. More features, less money.
If you haven't looked at new notebooks in a while, you're in for a pleasant surprise.
They're sleek, powerful and relatively cheap. Is it the crumbling world economies, or economies of scale? Joy says it's competition. Whatever it is, consumers who haven't maxed out their credit cards can get some deals.
We've been trying out a new notebook from HP, model dv5z. It's the best we've seen up till now.
The list price starts at $580, and if you add $85 worth of features (3GB of memory and the faster Wireless N connection to hot spots) it feels like $2,000.
What impressed us first about this notebook was the price. All the features clinched the deal. (That creaking noise you hear is the sound of Bob's wallet opening.)
The new notebook has a separate graphics card from ATI, speakers from Altec Lansing, and an AMD dual-core CPU. The built-in microphone and webcam let you make video phone calls. (Or you can leave them on to record what people are saying about you when they look in your office and you're not there. If someone takes your notebook, you can record their picture as they grab it.)
A trial version of Microsoft Office is included, but you don't need it since the notebook comes with Microsoft Works. If you want "Office" features, you can download OpenOffice, from openoffice.org., for free. Joy uses it all the time. For anti-virus and anti-spyware, we use the free Spybot Search and Destroy and either AVG Anti-Virus or Avira Anti-Virus, also free at download.com.
Could it be that Carly Fiorina, the ousted CEO of Hewlett Packard, was right in insisting that HP buy Compaq and get back into the computer business? The board of directors bowed to that and then threw her out. But now, just a couple years later, HP is the world's leading computer maker, overtaking Dell.
Internuts
TechBite.com is a new newsletter by Steve Bass, former editor of the "Tips and Tweaks" column in PC World magazine. This is a very savvy guy and his newsletter is a good place to pick up some, well, tips and tweaks.
USA.gov is the official site for finding the web addresses of US government agencies and learn what they do (something that has always baffled us). You can search by subject or agency name, arranged alphabetically. State agencies are listed alongside federal, so, for example, you can find a list of Arkansas state, county and city web sites, just before the Armed Forces Retirement Home.
Most information can be displayed in about a hundred languages, some of them quite obscure. (That's on a need-to-know basis.)
Readers can search several years of On Computers columns at our web site at OnComp.com. We can be contacted by email at JoyDee@oncomp.com and BobSchwab@gmail.com.
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