Ho do we know that it's Riverman posting and not some punk that stole
his laptop??

Can offer anything now but have some semi relate experience.
I buy a new laptop every couple of years. Three computers back I had
bought the $185 warentee plan and about 15 months later the thing went
belly up. I took it in and Office Depots plan would fix it in three
weeks! I needed one tomorrow. I bought an new Gateway and a
Portable harddrive. No more warentees -they aint really worth a ****.
The portable hard drive mirrows the hard drive. I have it connected
daily and it "ghosts" my hard drive. I keep it secure and away from
my laptop.
I have broke one laptop but have never had one stolen.
My advise forget warentees,buy the portable hard drive - they bigger
and cheaper all the time.
I called Gateway on my broken copmputer, the fixed it three days for
$0. I had a new one by then so I gave it to my daughter. The big
expense was $10 for a FedEx laptop box.



On Sep 6, 7:39*am, --riverman wrote:
OK, not fishing for any sympathy, but some strategies.

Some f**ker let themselves into my house Friday night and made off
with my laptop, SWMBOs jewelry, some cash I had stashed (apparently
not so well) and a few odds and ends. I'm not too worried about most
of the stuff, except SWMBOs jewelry has a lot of sentimental value.

But my laptop worries me. The desktop is unlocked, so they have access
to all my content.

I don't have any passwords written in black and white anywhere, but
there are hints hidden in findable places. Also, my tax info is in
there (in a desktop folder called 'taxes') with a ton of my personal
info. Also, who knows what someone with the wherewithal to snoop in a
folder called 'financial' might decide to try to figure out.

So I'm suddenly a bit worried about identity theft, as well as (to a
much lesser degree) someone getting access to my accounts. I have
already changed all my passwords, but I still worry about what else
might be in there.

Anyone got any good ideas of how to trace a missing computer? Or who
to notify to prevent identity theft before it happens? This is a first
for me, so I'm looking for valuable insights....