Laptop Theft

Second in a series of very riveting posts today ... not the most entertaining of subjects I realize ... but I had a friend who got her laptop stolen recently ... right out of her damn house. I got mine yanked out of my car. You never think it'll happen but it could. Or you could leave it on the roof of your car and drive away. Or smash it with a falling surfboard. It happens.

Lemme just tell u ... three things u should be doing ... easy and you'll kick yourself if you lose your laptop and u haven't done these things

1. write down the serial number, make and model and keep it someplace safe. this is one of the only hopes of getting it back (and you'll need for insurance and all that). if your shit gets stolen, you can't read off the serial number off the machine itself. tricky, eh?

2. put a login password on your machine so you have to type the password every time you log on or turn your machine on. this might seem annoying, but it means nobody can use your computer if they jack it ... they'll have to wipe the hard drive manually and none of your personal info will fall into wrong hands ... including banking info, address info, passwords, etc. for macs this is done in the preferences under security. for PCs ... well I think if you use a PC you should just let it get stolen

3. back up your shit. it's cheap and easy ... and you have no excuse. computers die spontaneously in addition to getting stoled up and crunched ... you'll lose everything ... get an external hard drive bigger than your internal hard drive. for macs, use the Time Capsule utility built in. it's elegant and very nice. for PCs, see #2 above

.