My laptop was stolen 18 months ago — but from my home office, in broad daylight, with a deadbolt on the door! The thief kicked in the back door while I was doing errands and took easily fenceable items. Luckily, I back up regularly, both remotely and to another internal computer, so no data was lost. But it was still a pain to buy and new computer and get everything set up again.

I travel a lot as a professional speaker — 3 times to Asia already this year. I’ve found my laptop fits easily in many in-room safes. Additionally, i use the cable lock for the times it doesn’t.

And don’t forget to lock your computer, even if you’re in a meeting room. A friend’s was stolen from the San Francisco Airport Marriott when his meeting of a handful of people took a break. There was no one in the room, so the thief must have been watching for break time. His computer was in his computer bag, BTW, not out on the table!

All your tips make sense. I just wanted to add a few more.

– Rebecca Morgan, CSP, CMC
Workplace Effectiveness Expert, Speaker, Bestselling Author

One thing that I haven’t seen addressed:

Keeping the content on your laptop out of a thief’s hands. We all need to do what we can to keep someone else having our client’s information should a theft occur.

Full Disk Encryption is a great comfort when used properly. We use CompuSec on all our systems. If a system is stolen it’ll provide about as much data as a turnip.

Joshua

Kathy Colvin
http://www.creative-assistant.com/blog

Sorry to hear about your laptop loss and all the hassle that entails. Thanks for your great advice and tips. I’d like to add a couple of my own.

TIP 1: Use a hard case and alarm cable
I used to travel internationally a real lot mainly in Europe, US and Asia Pacific for over 3 years.

I kept all my technology and toys in a hard case Samsonite wheelie carry-on bag (always use hard cases they take huge punishment and still look good).

I would secure the wheelie bag to my hotel desk, or airport lounge chair, or even unsecured to anything, with a Targus Defcon Universal Security Cable with Alarm (around $60). The cable is long enough to loop through your large case etc as well :-)

The targus gives a loud warning beep if you touch the luggage to let you know it means business. It shrieks like a banshee within seconds if you continue moving the luggage. You disarm it by inputting your combination and pushing a red release button – easy peasy.

It’s great when you are very tired and finding it hard to keep awake and watch your gear in an airport.

Nobody ever stole any of my luggage.

TIP 2: Backups using Goodsync
The real problem I have found with backup software (and I have used a few: Maxtor one-touch, retrospect and most recently Genie backup recently) is being certain they actually did the backup you thought they had :-).

It can be hard to tell if they have backed everything up properly (particularly with incremental backups) because some programmes create special backup files with odd names. It takes a bit of work to check.

Often, I thought it had run OK and then I would check and find it hadn’t. My conclusion: none of the ones I used were 100% reliable.

The best way to be sure is to use Goodsync. Click on a folder or entire drive in one window, the backup target in the other. Watch it analyse and synch or copy all the changed stuff (Or do a one way backup).

This great little programme is – without doubt – one of the most reliable, low cost and excellent utilities I have ever used. As opposed to the U3 Cruzer sync software which was always failing as I synched my daily changes between 2 laptops and and desktop between office and home – causing a number of lost work scenarios followed by a refund :-)

So for backups you can see and be sure of: tada Goodsync.

That’s all for now folks

Best regards

Rick Allen

I did a complete disk mirror back up which includes programs, settings and data files (25 gig) and now daily do incremental back ups set by a schedule in the back up software.

I also use an air card from Cingular/ATT when traveling. My only error was using it while in Mexico and not paying attention to the charges. US usage is free, but international is not. I was doing a lot of web design and moving large files around and when I got home received an airtime bill in excess of $4,000. In Mexico, the air card connection was slow and not very reliable. In the future I’ll only use international air card connections to check and send e-mails.

I often leave my laptop in hotel/condo rooms when I am away. I never considered a maid or maintenance person could steal my laptop. I’ll look into the cable lock.

Twice in the last 3 years I have experienced a fatal disk occurence and was able to recover most data files, but after installing a new drive found I didn’t have source disks for some of my most used programs. The mirror disk back up options are great and resolves the programs issue for the future.

Thanks again for a great thread.

Rob Goodwin
Two Cool Inc
http://www.coldone.com

Good job, Mark. I’ll Keep reading

So I’ve shared it on my blog as you offered (http://www.thewheeloflife.org)