Every 50 seconds, a laptop goes missing. Laptops are a common target of theft. In addition, because of their portable nature, laptops are misplaced, lost, or simply left behind. Last year, my wife’s laptop was stolen from our home. Since that time, I have been looking at effective solutions to protect information and recover stolen property.
Thankfully, my wife is not what some would call a ‘power user’. Her laptop didn’t have much in the way of personal information. She only used her little netbook to access Facebook, Gmail, and sync her iPhone to iTunes. All of our taxes, scanned records, financial databases, etc are on my computer. After filing a police report, we changed the passwords to her various online accounts. The police report did little to recover her laptop, so I perused local pawn shops for weeks afterwards hoping it would show up. It didn’t. So, I tried several free software solutions that promised to secure stolen data. Of course, every solution requires a program be installed on your computer BEFORE it is lost or stolen. LaptopLock is free, but hasn’t been updated since 2007. Enter LoJack for laptops.
LoJack for Laptops works on nearly every version of Windows and Mac OS X v.10.3 and higher. Some models of laptops even have a module built into the BIOS that lets the software persist even after a hard drive format. That means even if the laptop is completely erased, you still have a shot at recovering your equipment.
For $99, you get three years of guaranteed protection to locate, lock, delete, and recover your laptop. The service is transferable to another laptop if you buy a new machine in that time. LoJack even has a theft recovery team that works with law enforcement to help recover your machine. LoJack protects your laptop in these five ways, but only if you have signed up your account and installed the client software BEFORE your property goes missing!
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