Lo-Jack or Orbicule Undercover Useful?

[mclmk8d]

I bought a Mac Book Pro for my son who is off to college for Sound Recording and Technology. Being in a dorm, both he and I are worried about theft. I read about Lo-Jack and Orbicule Undercover and was wondering if anyone has first hand experience with either of both of these. Any help is much appreciated.

I will most likely be buying a MBP for myself in the near future..as a teacher, it is what my school district uses and I love them. I've read the rumors forum here...any new info come out?

 

[Number6]

The university I work for uses CompuTrace, the corporate version of Lo-Jack, on staff and faculty laptops and it works very well (some departments have already had to pursue missing machines and have had very good responses from Absolute Software, the parent company).

One caveat with Macs, however. Many WinTel machines have the client/agent for LoJack built into the chipset, so even if a thief reformats the drive, the agent will re-install itself and "phone home" as soon as the machine is connected to the internet. In essence, the only way to rid a WinTel machine of the agent it to replace the entire motherboard (in which case, why bother stealing the machine?).

Macs do not yet have this capability; the agent resides in a 'hidden" spot on the drive and will reinstall itself if the drive is reformatted, but it is possible to destroy the agent (deliberately omitting the details in case any nefarious lurkers are about). Absolute is supposed to be working with Apple to get the agent on the Mac chipset as well, but no announcements yet.

Overall, however, LoJack works as advertised.

 

[mclmk8d]

Thanks ...Adeona?

Thank you for your reply. I was reading about some freeware called Adeona, developed at the Universaity of Washington. Have you heard of it or has anybody here at Mac Forums used it?

 

[chscag]

To add to the thread, if you decide on Orbicule it's recommended to set a firmware password. A firmware password will prevent a thief from re-formatting the hard drive or even replacing it.

I also recommend buying this:

http://www.safeware.com/

Regards.

 

[mclmk8d]

Excuse me for my lack of knowledge...how do you set a firmware password on the MBP?

 

[chscag]

Read this Apple knowledge base article:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1352

Regards.