***Edit 02/20/2012 – The information below is outdated and a new free opensource software is available – Check out www.preyproject.com for more information ***

My friends laptop was recently stolen when someone broke into her bedroom window which was left ajar during the day. Besides her sense of security, among the several items they stole was her laptop. Today, as we were chatting about her being able to borrow one of my old p3 laptops sitting around collecting dust, it dawned on me that a “lojack” type of software must be available for laptop and mobile computers, much like there is a “lojack” tracking service for automobiles. I did some google searching and came across several options…most of them paid. Such options available include products by Computrace (www.lojackforlaptops.com) and Tometa Software (www.tometasoftware.com). However, being as cheap as I am, I did not think shelling out $20-$40 on a subscription was a good deal if I could do this by using a free but less elegant method.

After a bit more googling, I stumbled upon a piece of software supplied by the University of Washington which was written under the GNU GPL, this basically means that it is free to distribute and modify. Its called Adeona (http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/) and is available for the Mac OS X (10.4 or 10.5), Windows XP/Vista, and Linux. A small unobtrusive program, Adeona runs as a service and periodically and randomly contacts an OpenDHT server to store the IP address and other associated information of the laptop when it is connected to the internet. This information can then be used to track down your computer, and in theory be recovered. Spiffy eh?

All would be swell, except for one (albeit huge) bug in its implementation. The software is in an early stage of development, and as it is now coded, has an issue connecting to and communicating with the OpenDHT servers (this is due to be fixed in the next release). In my quick evaluation, the included recovery tool was not able to grab the necessary information and did not return the useful results necessary to track a stolen laptop. Adeona in theory is one awesome tool, but its implementation has yet to deliver. Overall though, I feel this free and tiny alternative to the paid and more full featured software (although much more comprehensive in comparison), is just what is needed in todays era of mobile computing.

Ill be waiting till Adeona is fixed, and once that is done, will have it installed on all my mobile devices within the blink of an eye.