lojack for laptops

jamesleecoleman

Does anyone have any experience with lojack for laptops? I'm thinking about getting it for my laptop and I don't want to run into any bad customer service or anything like that.

tiersten

Don't rely on it being ever returned.

These systems all assume that the thief at some point will power up the laptop and go online with it. If you've got a password set then they're just going to reformat the HD anyway and your recovery software will go bye bye.

Even if they do go online or are near a unprotected WiFi AP then you're hoping that the ISP will actually tell you or the recovery company who used that IP at that particular point in time.

You occasionally see stories about how somebody was able to recover their laptop because of software like this but take those with a pinch of salt. Think of how many laptops are stolen every day. Now think of the number of stories you see of people recovering their laptop. Not all the laptops stolen will have the software but still...

jamesleecoleman

Even if I don't get it back. The premium service will basically give me 1000 back or something along those lines. I guess its better than nothing though because my laptop isn't password protected. Well windows isn't but ubuntu is. I guess this is one of those better than nothing chances. I don't expect it to be returned but there aren't a large group of people at the community college who has the skills to reformat a drive and all of that good stuff. Wouldn't the ISP give the police the ip address if they were doing an investigation?

dynamik

More than likely, the police have better things to do than look for a laptop. I wouldn't count on any help from them.

If you have anything sensitive on it, look into full drive encryption with True Crypt.

mamono

Don't forget regular backups. If a criminal really wants something, nothing will stop them. Consider the worst case scenario and you should be fine.