In Praise of 1Password

I am frugal (or possibly cheap) and so have been using MSecure password manager (which is inexpensive and works pretty well). I had read the glowing comments on 1Password but couldn't get past the price until the other day.

I left my iPad at work (or at least I hoped I had). Was debating driving back to look for it when the wife suggested I use the Find My Phone feature (what a great idea says I!).

Unfortunately I could not remember my password to MobileMe. My wife asked me, "Isn't in MSecure?". She was correct, I had definitely entered it, on my iPad and then neglected to sync it to my MBP. So, if I only had my iPad I could have looked up my password so I could log into MobileMe and find my iPad which I needed so I could look up my password and . . . Well you get the picture!

I drove back to work and found my iPad waiting on my desk. When I got back home I immediately downloaded a trial version of 1Password, played with it enough tom convince myself it was worth trying and bought the iPad/iPhone APP. It syncs easily over my wifi so I no longer have an excuse for not keeping all of my passwords synched and backed up.

Yep, and now that it has a Windows version, I've got everything on my Macs, my iPhone, my iPad, and my Win HTPC. Pretty cool.

It took me about 3 years to break down and get it - and I was coming from using Roboform on my Win machines.

I did that once too - left my iPad at the office - I just worried about it all night.

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bobtomay said:

I did that once too - left my iPad at the office - I just worried about it all night.

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Strange isn't it! I never worried about leaving my laptop at the office, but I drove 30 miles round trip rather than leave my iPad overnight in my locked office (at least that's where I hoped it was).

Yeah, and our office staff is down to 8 people. No one has been there less than 5 years and I have the 3rd shortest longevity at 10 years. The 5 above me are at 18-20+ years. And still worried about it. My round trip is about 60 miles though - guess I wasn't worried about it 60 miles worth.

1password is great for that. But it also has it's own vulnerability. If you forget the 1password password or something happens to that, big troubles. It becomes many points of weakness down to one more secure I'll admit but still a weakness.

But is the downsides of 1password slight enough to make 1password worth getting? I'd personally say yes for the right person.

I use mSecure as I like the fact that it does not require an additional purchase or a desktop app to backup and restore your info. Uses a unique email system.

When you want to backup, mSecure sends you an encrypted email which you keep on your desktop email client. To restore, just forward the email back to the device you are restoring to (after installing the mSecure app). Your mSecure password is the key that decrypts the email.

Clever and simple...

Razormac said:

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Strange isn't it! I never worried about leaving my laptop at the office, but I drove 30 miles round trip rather than leave my iPad overnight in my locked office (at least that's where I hoped it was).

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Now that is proof how much the ipad is infiltrated our lives. Won't drive ages for a notebook but will for an ipad. And for a device still in revision 1 and less then a year old.

the8thark said:

Now that is proof how much the ipad is infiltrated our lives. Won't drive ages for a notebook but will for an ipad. And for a device still in revision 1 and less then a year old.

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Agreed. If I had to give up any of my electronic goodies my iPad would be one of the last, if not the last to go.


BTW Jaygray, my post was not meant to be a slam at MSecure. It is a good program and a good value. The problem was with me not making sure I had synched between my devices, a process which 1Password makes much easier.

Not only is 1Password a great app, but their support and customer relations are nothing short of terrific. This past Xmas season they sent an eMail to current registered owners and offered to allow them to give free registrations for the program to whomever they wished. (Sort of like a Xmas present)

I sent a free registration to my son and one other to a good friend. Now how can you beat that for customer service?

I got 1password with the last macupdate promo. I bought the promo because of 1password and default folder x. Although overall I like it - I did find one caveat. It only works with Google Chrome through a kludge. Hopefully they will get that supported soon.

Other than that I've been pretty pleased with the program. I've just started digging too. It has secure notes, and a secure form fill. Plus a place to hold account numbers. Pretty neat tool. I've been using an encrypted macjournal entry for these things - I am going to switch over to 1password.

As noted it seems to be a single point of failure so I am still worried about that.