You can "uninstall" the software, but I had to wonder whether it really goes away. Which is where a few little concerns come in.įirst, the software does live on your computer pretty much forever. You can almost hear the computer growling, "I'll be baaaack." Sounds a little like Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. have just begun embedding a recovery chip on their system boards, so that even if the thief replaces the hard drive, the computer will still be able to make that SOS call. And, to make it even more invulnerable, most of the big laptop makers. LoJack for Laptops-Absolute licensed the Lojack name from the car theft recovery company-can survive the entire stripping and reformatting of the hard disk. This is also one tough little piece of software. The local police stumbled onto a big chop-shop location with drugs and weapons. Last month, for instance, a distress call came from a laptop in McKinney, Texas. They also realized that, in 5% of the cases, the location they go to other criminal activity is taking place." But this is stolen property with a built-in electronic tip where it's located. Property theft is a situation where they don't get a lot of success. "At the beginning, we wondered whether law enforcement would really care about laptops," Livingston confessed. Once the computer's been located, the recovery team-all ex-cops, by the way, most of them from the Vancouver police-call local law enforcement and tell them where they can find the purloined device. And then there's a third way that even John Livingston, Absolute's chairman and CEO won't tell us about. If it's broadband, it can track the IP address and then, with cooperation from the Internet Service Provider, locate the street address where the IP is installed. If it's a dial-up modem, it can tell what phone number the computer is using to get online, and trace the address. Within seconds, Absolute can use one of three ways to determine where the wayward computer has gone. If the computer gets into the wrong hands and is reported stolen, Absolute's recovery team will see that status pop up on their screen. By the way, all the time your computer's been sitting in your office or den, it has been regularly checking in with its master in Vancouver. It works like a charm, as soon as the bandits use your stolen laptop to go online. Within seconds, your computer goes on Absolute Software's "most wanted" list. If your computer does walk out of your office, hotel room or the trunk of your car, you simply call the 800-number, or go to another computer, and report it stolen. If that happens, that's when the "recovery team" kicks into action. Then, you sit back and wait for it to be stolen. (There are absolute hopes to add more retailers later this year.) Load it onto your laptop, and it dials into a computer in Vancouver, it logs you on, registers your computer's serial number and who you are along with a password. Basically, the idea is that you walk into CompUSA, where it went on sale Monday, plunk down $49.95 (or $99 for three years of protection), and you go home with the program on a compact disc. Inevitably, there's more to the story than that, of course. And lo and behold, they told me just where my laptop was located. The folks at Absolute Software delivered a disk to my office and, after a few glitches having to do with my outdated laptop software, I successfully installed it, made the appropriate calls to an 800-number in Vancouver, British Columbia. Meanwhile, I did spend some time playing with LoJack for Laptops. It's also in some respects a little scary. Absolute Software's LoJack for Laptops used to be called CompuTrace, and now it's back with a new name and a new identity. Well, maybe not a swat team and maybe there wouldn't be a whole nest of bandits involved, but there is a recently renamed software product that promises pretty much that. In fact, the reality may not be that far off.
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