T41 theft alarm

[Junaid0]

IBM t41's have hard drive protection... They can feel when the laptop is being moved... is there any way you can "lock" a laptop so that when soeone moves it the small speakers go off w/ an alarm, or "Stop stealing me!"

this would be nice for those of us who put our laptops in public places and turn around for a couple seconds, or go to the bathroom... just an idea...

 

[Abhi]

Thats actually a good idea.

but the existing speakers on t41 are too tiny to be an effective alarm.

 

[ai42]

You could certainly program that. I saw a while ago when somebody made a proof of concept program that just visually displayed the horizon line by pulling the API calls for the acelerometer.

Of course you would kind of want to program it a bit smarter than simply go off if it were moved. I mean my R50s hard drive must turn off 50 times a day just sitting on my desk just from minor bumps and such. Of course I also agree that the internal speakers are not very loud enough to be an effective alarm.

Of course you could do something similar to that mac thing a while ago and have the program automatically email (assuming you are connected wirelessly) if the alarm goes off with as much relevant data available to location and network it is connected to. And log you off the current user or even shut down the computer (and if you have a BIOS password) that would be exceedingly difficult to break past.

 

[znaps]

I have a laptop case which has that function built-in. It's a Port Noteworthy case with a Defcon 3 alarm system.