Matthew Homann’s Tablet was stolen out of his car. Ouch.
It’s so important to be careful with your Tablet. I know I’d pay extra for a chip-level ID that is pinged to a server each time the Tablet is connected to the Internet. I know it sound like big brother, but if my Tablet is stolen, I’d like to have a chance to get it back.
This is the third Tablet that I’ve heard being stolen. The other two are: My brother’s Tablet was taken from his classroom and a sales engineer had his lifted from luggage he’d checked in at the Atlanta airport.
Despite 2 – 2.5 hours battery life I’ve started carrying my Acer 111CTi in it’s slip case rather than a laptop bag. As it’s nice and small with the 10inch screen it doesn’t actually look like I’m carrying a tablet.
I don;t think tablets are any more likely to get stolen than a notebook — and possibly less so by a co-worker since they are still pretty obvious. (Gee, Ted, didn’t Bob just lost a TPC like that?!)
Regarding checking it baggage — sorry, but that’s just plain stupid. Never check anything of significant value in your luggage — laptops, camera’s, nice MP3 players (or jewlery or watches for that matter).
That said, I have thought about the “homing device” solution, too. I wondered if LoJack could come up with something that manufacturers could put on their motherboards.
D.
Well, I don’t know about chip-level, but it would be fairly straightforward to do it as a system service that would be harder-than-casual to discover. Hmmm… Given that it would be a purely voluntary thing, a key-logger that posted to the true owner might eventually reveal the thief’s identity? Except that it would probably reveal a potentially innocent buyer of stolen goods, not the real thief.