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 - Works but has problemsI wanted LoJack for my new Sager NP9262 notebook running Vista Ultimate. It wouldn't install. Customer support sent me a customized installation package, which worked okay. After installing LoJack, I began to notice mysterious problems. My Sager would sometimes freeze in the BIOS during boot. After a 3 minute delay, it would then proceed and boot normally. Other times Vista would freeze during startup with a blank screen, and I would eventually have to force a power-off and reboot (which usually worked fine). I had numerous contacts with LoJack's customer support. They did their best to be helpful, but could never determine the cause of my problems. I eventually gave up and returned LoJack. (Amazon accepted the return without any problems, which is why I always try to use them, even when other vendors may have a cheaper price!) When I asked LoJack's customer support how to uninstall LoJack, they sent me a procedure, which I followed. Unfortunately, this seems to merely have disabled it, rather than uninstalled it. Its files (rpcnet.exe, rpcnet.dll, rpcnetp.exe and rpcnetp.dll) are still on my hard drive, and I still occasionally have these mysterious hangups. Aside from these problems, LoJack did work as advertised. While it may work just fine for you, I advise caution with this product, as it may modify your BIOS, and it does not seem to be easily removed. I found lots of information on the web, but too late. Rating:  - YEAH, it really does work, we purchased this for our company of over 3,500 laptops and....YEAH, it really does work, we purchased this for our company of over 3,500 laptops and it reduced our loss rate from almost 100 notebooks a year to less than 10. We've dissected this software and know how it works, but we aren't going to detail the guts in a public forum to help thieves disable it. Instead, we're going to assure you this stuff is hard to remove and most laptop thieves don't know this technology exists, or what to look for -until the police comes to arrest them. This is essentially a piece of "spyware" because it is resident system agent that runs with the OS but will also embed itself into the MBR and the BIOS on some systems. Check with Absolute software to verify if your model number has BIOS support. It will contact a monitoring center on a daily basis by modem, LAN or even cellular, whatever network connection to the Internet you have, this software will connect to the monitoring center with a basic "hello" packet so the source IP address is recorded. The modem uses a 1-800 number and caller ID can't be blocked from toll free numbers because the US Supreme Court ruled years ago their right to billing supersedes your right to privacy and since the owner of a toll free number is paying the toll,,, voila they get your phone number. Scenario: Your computer is stolen, you alert Absolute Software and the next time the Computrace agent notifies the monitoring center it is flagged and will also configure the agent to go "hyper alert" and send hello packets frequently. Absolute then works with law enforcement agencies to help direct them based on source IP or caller ID where to recover your stolen laptop. Law enforcement agencies are receptive to this assistance because people who steal laptops often steal other items so the cops recover alot of other stolen goods with the help of Absolute Software. Special note, this software works even if the system isn't fully booted, if the computer is just left at the logon screen, it still works, if the computer is syskeyed and requires a startup password or bootdisk,,, IT STILL SENDS THE HELLO PACKETS. All the systems can be managed from a web interface at lojackforlaptops website. IF YOU SELL THE LAPTOP, YOU CAN TRANSFER THE LICENSE TO ANY OTHER COMPUTER AS OFTEN YOU'D LIKE. Technical support is excellent, we reached support engineers by phone in Canada and they can work the fluent sys engi or end user. If you have just one, or 10,000 laptops, this is a worthy investment, you can insure your laptop, but isn't your data priceless ?
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