Orbicule releases Undercover 4

I would much rather have a more desperate sounding plea of help from the computer. If I heard that I'd probably laugh.

Help help help I am a stolen Macintosh computer....

i was going to go for undercover until I found the Prey Project (http://preyproject.com/) seems pretty good to me. Open source & free. I think the only benefit is that you get the orbicule people helping you recover your mac, and on-hand.

I haven't compared it too much though, on the surface it seems mostly equal. What do you guys think?

This software is great and gives me peace of mind for all my home computers. Since the average person who would steal my computers isn't an IT professional they aren't going to know how or what to do to make sure the computer doesn't start transmitting it's location. Therefore there's a high probability my stolen Mac will be recovered.

A thief steals my Mac, uses it (looking for info on it that could net them more money) or sells it immediately because they want the cash, who's to say the buyer knows or cares if it's stolen. They will use it as is.

I don't want to discredit the thief's technical knowledge but in all likelihood they are just looking for a quick score not an IT project.

I've been using Undercover since version 1 and if I ever have to report my Mac stolen I know this gives me the best chance of getting it back.

Why would you pay for something you can get for free and with pretty much the same functionality??

Does anybody know about Prey?? It's an open source alternative

http://preyproject.com/

I had my iMac stolen and it was recovered using Orbicule (the last version, not 4.0), and have since installed it on every one of the Macs I admin at work (+/- 30 iMacs/MacBook Pros/Xserve). The piece of mind is reassuring. Also, I suggest if you have an iMac and it sits on your desk, to bolt it to the desk somehow, or use a "bike chain" type lock to affix it to something that would prevent a thief from dashing off w/ it.

Also, I did have a firmware password installed on the recovered iMac, and when the Police returned my iMac, there was a OS X 10.5 install disc inside that they were trying to use to wipe it clean but kept failing.

I use TweetMyMac, it's free, it's always running and all it takes is a Twitter account for your computer to use.

http://themacbox.co.uk/tweetmymac/

The upgrade is free for all registered Undercover users.
Simply run the installer.

Peter
Orbicule

If there is no active connection to phone home out on, it's like trying to call the police on a phone with no dial tone. It ain't gonna happen cap'n.

The stolen computer needs internet access to work. In addition, firmware passwords can easily be reset by removing some RAM and booting it back up.

I will agree that this is better than nothing.

If the software transmits nothing how does it ever know it's stolen? You log into the Orbicule site and it tells the software that it's stolen. But how does Orbicule know where the laptop is in the first place so it can contact it?