Picture this: Someone tries to steal your laptop off your desk and as soon as they pull the plug from the wall, your latpop emits a screaming siren that won’t quit until your password is entered to unlock the laptop and disable the alarm.There’s another scenario: You take one of your old USB thumb drives (maybe the one you used to make an anti virus bootable scanner) attach a chain to it and secure it to your desk; if someone tries to move your laptop, unplugging the USB thumb drive in the process, the alarm goes off.
This is possible because of an interesting piece of software called “LAlarm.” It’s free for personal use and there’s a nominal fee for commercial use. Download LAlarm from this link: http://www.lalarm.com/en/index.htm.
I tested this software by installing it on my Dell laptop. It works. You simply install the software, configure the options you want and restart your laptop. To set the alarm, you just press Windows key + L to lock the workstation. If anyone pulls the plug or removes the thumb drive, the alarm sounds.
There’s much more to the software than just an alarm. You can set the software to destroy your data in selected folders in the event of a theft. You can also set zones based on IP addresses and cause an alarm to sound if the IP address changes.
The theft alarm is not affected by the system volume control setting–it’s screaming loud no matter how you have your volume set.
It’s a very cool tool.
