T61p was stolen, anything I can do or SOL?

I don't know if anyone remembers but I was regularly in the forums this past winter as I was looking for a new laptop. I settled on a T61p that I bought in late December. Anyway, it was stolen from my room in my dorm when I was moving out last week. I had a 2 year Thinkplus Extended Service warranty but I think that only covers theft while the notebook is being sent out for service. I'm resigned to not being able to do anything about it but I thought I'd ask if anyone knew if there was something else. Thanks.

 

Make sure you are checking ebay and craigslist, or local pawn shops. Laptops are often stolen to be sold.

 

I'm really sorry to hear that. As mobsterrobster points out, most laptops are resold so look on ebay ,craigslist, etc... Also, at my college, if you can establish the theft was due to poor security from the school, they have to refund you part of the price of the laptop. If you find it or decide to get a new pc, I really recommend using Lojack http://www.lojack.com/ on it. They found my 1330 the same day it was stolen. good luck.

 

Yeah, that a bum deal. I would recommend Lojack to anyone that lives in high traffic areas. What's great about Lenovo is that the Computrace Agent is already loaded into the BIOS so all you have to do is get the service turned on.

It's times like this a built-in webcam would be nice to snap pics of the thief.

 

Too late for this, but get renters insurance in the future. It's dirt cheap, like one or two fast food meals a month, and it'd get you back to where you should be. Most people don't realize that personal items stolen out of your car aren't covered under your automotive insurance, but it is protected by renters insurance. If your iPod, 300-disc cd wallet, laptop or whatever is stolen out of your car, you are SOL if you only have auto insurance.

 

File police report with campus police department and with local department.
In the unlikely event the laptop is recovered, the police will know who it belongs to.

 

Firstly, thanks for the responses. That laptop was like a part of me, still getting over it.

This is what I did before I left but it seems gone for good.

I filled out a form to that extent and it was no doubt do to poor security from the school, at the time any and everyone could freely get into a building full of people moving out, when usually the doors require a swipe to open, at the time people had them propped open. Even then I'm not anticipating any help from the school. I guess in the future Lojack will be one of the first things I look into..

 

Yea it's a good idea to file a police report, at least to keep it on file in case something is found. I am just curious, but what university is this?

I am somewhat skeptical of whether Lojack is worth the money, because if the thief is tech saavy he/she would know better than connecting it to the internet w/o wiping the hdd first. If that happens Lojack would be useless.

 

first thing you should do is file a report with the police. Then keep a eye out on ebay or craiglist

 

What you could also do which is effortless, is encrypt your whole partition. At least don't let thieves access your data. They'll have to, at the least, remove the partition and perform a clean installation.

In some cases, access to our sensitive data could be a bigger concern than the hardware loss itself.

 

Dude, the owner is a college student and I am sure the loss of the hardware is the main problem here, not the data.

 

How do you know that? We don't know what else is stored on the machine other than college work.

 

If you ask me about tracking systems, I think they're useless and induce scare into laptop owners with their advertisement (LoJack) with their "1 out of 10 laptops is stolen" message.

Lock your doors, own a guard dog and lock your laptop away in a safe place out of sight. What more can you physically do to protect your belongings? What if the laptop's sold overseas? What if the laptop is formatted? How will those tracking systems help? The police take their sweet time with stolen cars. You think they care about stolen laptops?

I'm not saying the hardware loss here isn't important. I'm aware that as students (such as I), we really stick by our expensive toys that we pay good money for and losing things such as laptops, ipods, mobile phones can be a true pain in the ass.

What I'm saying is, anyone could, for example, have a bunch of stored passwords. This would enable anyone with access into Windows to access sites and applications that require membership. Getting past the windows logon is easy to crack so even if your account has a pass, you can get past it.

You could have billing-related documents (bills, etc.) that carry sensitive data that you don't want anyone to see. You could simply have pictures, and I could go on with files that you don't want strangers to access.

All I'm saying is if you value your data, encrypt it. At least you'll be giving thieves only 1 of the 2 things they got their hands on (hardware).

 

Just an update:

I filed a claim with my insurance and i was told that I can order a new T61p with as close as possible specs and send them the invoice/receipt & the insurance will pick up the tab. I had a T7300, a system with a T9300 seems to be the current equivalent, right? All things equal, it comes out to a little under what I paid.

 

Great news! I am happy for you. So it was covered under insurance, no loss to you?(obviously you were unhappy you lost your machine and any data on it).

 

Thanks, and while I was obviously unhappy about the theft, I had also been resigned to the loss. Things turned out better than I could have hoped.

 

I disagree. Reformatting doesn't affect LoJack's effectiveness (at least on ThinkPads, as I understand it) *at all*. If you've purchased and activated the service, it will be notified the next time the machine is connected to the internet, even after a clean Windows re-install.

I'd consider that *highly* useful.

 

i'm moving into a dorm this year and i'm kinda worried. especially that i'll be taking with me my camera gear and stuff.
i'm wondering, did u leave ur room unlocked? or did they break into ur room?

 

This I agree.... especially on stuff like credit card numbers that you use to buy items in the online stores....

 

This is definitely good news... at least you get to have a replacement laptop so you're good to go.

 

Very good news!!!!!

"I am somewhat skeptical of whether Lojack is worth the money, because if the thief is tech saavy he/she would know better than connecting it to the internet w/o wiping the hdd first. If that happens Lojack would be useless."

The authot of this statement would find himself in jail if he thinks that's the cure. I'd love for the thief of my laptop to believe this because the laptop would be recovered very soon.

Lojack resides in the bios. You can reformat the harddrive or you could even replace the harddrive... it makes no difference, lojack will still phone in the next time there is a connection.

 

Someone can just replace the motherboard.

 

Yes, but what common thief is going to do that?

 

What good would it do to steal a laptop knowing you are going to have to pay more than the laptop is worth to replace the motherboard, not to mention the labor?

How many laptop thiefs do you believe do this? A percentage estimate from you perhaps?

 

this is off topic....but can anyone answer my question? i'm getting a T61u through school, and it comes with a webcam. does that automatically mean it comes with a microphone? i want to webchat with my friends.

 

Yes, it comes with a microphone.

 

The T9300's more of a T7500. The T8300 would be closer.

Of course, if your insurance company doesn't know that, power to you.

 

Does not matter. As long as it's the same price he payed for his old laptop.

 

First thing i did when i got my x61 is to register my serial number to Lenovo and lock my supervisor password. since lojack nor theft insurance are not offered in my country, local thieves will have a hard time unlocking or will not even bother to pay unlocking service because its expensive. Most thieves will sell it at a very low price just to get rid of it right away. they don't want any stolen items in their hands as evidence. or take it all apart and sell the spareparts on repair shops and ebay.

 

Does anyone know if there is a way to contact Lenovo and report the old laptop stolen, just in case someone tries to use the warranty?

 

Yep, contact their Technical Support team asap and report it stolen. They'll flag the serial number in thier system so nobdy can make any claims against it.

DD

 

I already lost one couple of years ago, and now lock my current using kensington lock even when it is sitting on my desk, charging... Call me paranoid but...

I am reading this and LoJack got me interested - I visited the website and read all I could find but could not find confirmation of what someone here mentioned earlier - is it really installed in the BIOS, making it impossible to override (as in complete HDD wipeout or replacement)... I really wish I could stop my current obsession with wires and locks but until I am sure of the security of the alternative, I doubt I could do that..

Could anyone *confirm* that once LoJack is on, there is no escape for those who lay hands on our "precious ones"

 

It is really installed in a permanent section of the Bios.

Before I installed Lojack, I was looking at the BIOS with a Bios editor trying to understand how the BIOS detects non-lenovo wi-fi cards. While I was doing that, I saw the permanent hooks for lojack. They are there and they are real.

 

Is it possible for them to do that going off of the order number or something similar? I never wrote down the serial.

 

the serial # should be tied to your invoice. If you have that, they should be able to dig it up for you.

DD

 

So, as long as I install LoJack and then lock my BIOS + admin pass I should be safe? COOL! At last, I might add!

 

I don't think you even have to lock your bios. Lojack is supposed to reside in a non-accessible, non-flashable section of the bios, so in theory it should be impossible to erase.

It does need to tie into Windows in order to work, so if the thief/subsequent buyer either installs Linux right away or never connects to the internet you might be out of luck, but again, how many people are going to do that?

 

If LoJack didn't ever have to rely on the software OS install I would highly consider it.

 

I think about the only think it has to rely on would be TCPIP sockets.

 

I think i read somewhere not sure if it was on this forum, but someone actually did a test to prove the efficiency of LoJack. A brief run down of his test. He took a week vacation where he traveled to three different locations in the U.S. He called into LoJack reporting that his laptop was stolen, (which of course he still had his laptop on him) then he flew all the way across the U.S. logged into the internet for a couple seconds to see whether LoJack was working, following day, flew to mid U.S. logged onto the internet for a couple of seconds. After all that, LoJack was able to record all his locations even when he rebooted his laptop. Talk about anti-theft huh? xD