filevault?

so I'm playing with my system settings and I find this do-hicky called "filevault" and I say to myself, 'self, this looks interesting, give it a shot.' so then my powerbook says it's encrypting all of my files and this would take two hours. Two hours later, none of my files 'seem' encrypted and I was wondering if somebody could tell me exactly the point of turning on filevault. Thanks fellas!

Basically Filevault protects your files from others, who don't know your password, if they were to get ahold of your laptop. To you they do look unencrypted because Panther does it on the fly, but to someone not logged in as you, they would be encrypted.

Here's more information on FileVault

the next thing I did was to automatically log in as myself - did I just waste two hours?

No, you just might want to turn off auto log-in since that defeats the purpose

oh. I'll probably un-auto-log-in when I get to college...for now i'm still living at home, so security from my mom isn't a real big issue. (she couldn't turn this on and find my files anyhoo...so yeah)

how did you know about that?! Hehe...no, seriously. She's happy with her dell and she doesn't know how to use a mac in the slightest. (even though it was pretty easy for me to learn quickly...

Icarus: Just a quick warning. Filevault has the capability to serious 'f up your computer. If you start noticing system settings not taking effect, or weird things changing on each boot, it's because of Filevault. For instance, now that it's turned on, go and change a setting like turn bluetooth on or off or whatever...and then reboot. Most likely, that setting will not stay anymore.

Filevault is a broken feature that I recommend all Mac users stay far far away from. Apple feels the same way, and most Apple employees refuse to use it. Luckily, they're revamping it in Tiger.

i agree Osiris22x. plus if you lose ur password ur screwed.

I think I'm starting to feel the same way about the vault. I restarted, it told me that I had too much stuff in my home directory do-hicky, and when I restart my bookmarks are gone, my auto-fill doesn't work, I need to reconfigure mail and the night before I filled up my calander...that's also gone. Pain the ***! So I'm turning that shiznit off now. Thanks for the suggestion!