It’s one of those dreaded things in our tech-centric lives—losing your laptop, smartphone or tablet. Whether you leave it behind accidentally or someone relieves you of it without your consent, the end result is the same—it sucks and you now have to worry about what is on that device. As (bad) luck would have it, our friend Render’s laptop sprouted legs and walked away on him this past week so we made that the topic of this week’s show: Losing your laptop.
Render is okay, although with a lighter wallet, because he had backups and used full-disk encryption. He doesn’t have to worry about the thief being able to get anything usable off the laptop.
Full-disk encryption might not be for everyone, but it is something people who travel around with their laptops should consider. Lots of tools out there to do it (Windows, OS X, and Linux all have built-in tools as well) and there are factors to consider beyond security so … let’s listen:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:01 — 10.1MB) | Embed
My tip of the week is setting up “Find My iPhone” in iOS devices. All it takes is activating MobileMe with your current iTunes account and downloading the app. This works for iPads (1 and 2) and iPhone 4 series running iOS 4—sorry iPhone 3 3GS folks I think you’re left out on this one. Here are the screens on your iPhone that you’ll need to go through to turn on MobileMe and then download the app from the App Store (it’s all free).
Hat tip to Tod Maffin this week because I picked up some great new tips for making this podcast better.
Music is by Derek K. Miller and, yes, he really did write it for me.
