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mid/low range laptop with good data security ?

M

merk

Senior member
Hi all,

I may be looking to pick up a laptop fairly soon. I do not need a uber desktop replacement laptop. Need something i can get online with, and open up some small projects in visual studio 2005-2010, mostly websites.

One thing i really want is some sort of hardware based data security. Previous laptop had a finger print scanner and the HD was locked until you input a correct fingerprint. I'd like something like that so that if the laptop is ever stolen, i at least dont have to worry about them gaining access to whatevers on the HD.

any suggestions as to what model laptops i should look at? Took a quick look at dell but unfortunately they dont seem to have a search option to narrow them down based on the security features.

Oh and i dont want a huge screen. 14 inches would be fine.

Thanks
 
Intel sandy bridge i5-based T420 with fingerprint reader. Use either Truecrypt or Bitlocker and take advantage of Intel AES-NI hardware-based encryption acceleration. If you can flex on your budget, some of the newer SSD drives have built-in encryption, this will give you a healthy speed increase.

Good luck!
 
i didnt think i'd need to use truecrypt. I thought with the fingerprint readers, if you dont unlock the drive with a valid print, the data on the drive is not readable?

anyhow, that thinkpad laptop doesn't look bad. I did find an HP laptop that seems a little better though - 6gb of ram and a 320meg 7200rpm drive. would come out to about $100 cheaper then the thinkpad.

also had someone recommend a latitude e4200. Could pick that up for around $700 on the dell outlet site. Guess i'll have to do a little research and compare all the specs and user reviews for them all.

thanks for the suggestion
 
*Most* of the laptops that have finger print scanners only lock the drive in Windows, I'm pretty sure that's what you saw. The drive could have it's data read if you pulled it out of the unit and placed it in something else. Drives that are actually locked are encrypted drives, and they are a different hard drive from the ones manufacturers normally sell. In this case a piece of software has to do on the fly encryption/decryption in conjunction with your finger print. as gsaldivar said.
 
the laptop i had was a dell latitude
http://www.dell.com/us/dfb/p/latitude-d630/pd?cs=28

It says it provides full disk encryption. And the drive was definitely locked outside of windows since i had to give it a print or password before it would even boot.

Is there any benefit to using something like the above laptop, versus using something like bitlocker or truecrypt? One more secure then the other? Or better performance using one over the other? I'm guessing just about any type of encryption is ok since i"m not worried about NSA agents taking my laptop. Just your stupid criminal breaking into my car or home and swiping the laptop. I think in that scenario even the worst encryption would probably be good enough.

thanks
 
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