Tarca's office also uses Computrace to keep tabs on the 700 or so laptops utilized by faculty. "We needed to provide better asset management and theft deterrence," says Fred Tarca, the school's director of administration and operations. For example, Dell customer Quinnipiac University, just north of New Haven, Conn., has Computrace installed on all the Dell Latitude laptops that incoming freshmen are required to purchase. The lion's share of Absolute's sales come via its PC partners, who pre-install Computrace and offer it to their corporate and educational sector clients.
(Previously, Absolute's software was offered as an add-on feature, requiring manual installation.)
The BIOS (short for Basic Input/Output System) contains essential software code that allows computer components, like the keyboard and mouse, to function when first turned on, before the Windows operating system kicks in.īeing baked into the laptop makes Computrace almost impossible to remove, even if the hard drive gets wiped clean. Clients can also, if they choose, remotely delete data post-theft.Ībsolute has taken off over the past two years thanks to deals it has cut with top PC makers like Dell ( Charts), HP ( Charts), Fujitsu, Lenovo and Gateway ( Charts) to embed Computrace in the so-called BIOS on millions of computers. When the stolen computer connects to the Internet, the Computrace software provides its location to Absolute's 12-person recovery team, which then works with local law enforcement to recover the PC. Here's how Computrace works: If a PC is stolen, clients dial an 800 number or report the theft to Absolute via the Internet.
Founded 12 years ago, Computrace today protects over 800,000 computers and has helped everyone from San Francisco high school students to global accounting firms to Canadian oilfield equipment suppliers retrieve stolen or waylaid PCs. One security tool that's becoming as ubiquitous as bike locks on city streets is Computrace laptop recovery and tracking software, made by a company out of Vancouver called Absolute Software.