If you read my earlier post about All Purpose Laptops and ran out and bought one, or maybe bought one just before the end of the year, let me ask a few questions. I'm working on some laptop safety guidelines now, and I'd like to hear from you.
Did you get a laptop with pre-boot disk encryption built in? Or did you buy a third party encryption product to keep your data safe? If not, why not?
Do you have a good backup system for the data on your laptop? Online backup services that work over the Internet really take the pain out of backing up laptops that stay out of the office most of the time. Are you using automated backup of some kind on your laptop? If not, why not?
If you lose your laptop, will you get it back? One survey from 2005 said over 4,500 laptops were left inside cabs in the city of Chicago alone. Not long after the new Denver airport opened, they reported nearly a thousand laptops a week were left behind at security checkpoints. Not stolen, just forgotten. If you forget your laptop, what are the odds you'll ever see it again?
Send me a note if you have good answers to these questions. Send me a note if you do something interesting to protect your laptops. Or send me a note if your company says laptops are dead and you do everything with smart phones.
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To Answer your Questions
I have an IBM with built in secure drive encryption as well as built in backup. IBM has developed a laptop that can handle any physical abuse I accidentally give it but the system itself is to secure on some levels. The encryption dock is amazing. It can unmount for added security when not in use and to re-mount the user must type in a password. For people just playing with the system this can be troublesome because passwords may be forgotten or lost and there is no means for remounting the drive.
Since my laptop is almost two years old there is no real incentive to get any protection on it, but to answer your question I might not get it back since there is no way to access the docs if I am not present due to the extreme security (unless someone hacks the laptop).
Since I am a college student Laptops are important for my survival. Without them I could not achieve much work so I have all the files backed up on an external hard drive just in case anything does happen. The two drives are in separate locations minimizing the chance of losing everything I have. It is a 160 GB drive.
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