<p>I’m interested in purchasing a laptop before college begins. I have been searching around and looking for Sony Vaios, and have a budget of abotu 1300 dollars. Are there any sony vaios with a fingerprint reader & webcam & bluetooth possibly?</p>
<p>Also, what are your opinions on the usefulness & practicality of fingerprint readers on college student’s laptops?</p>
<p>Are laptops stolen a lot in college?</p>
<p>I can only speak for the reader I got with an Alienware. It worked 2/3 of the time. Personally, I ditched it. Maybe others have had better experiences. </p>
<p>No one here that I know has had their laptop stolen, but I have two friends (both at technical institutes, incidentally), who were unfortunate enough to have had it happen to them. And the flyers are true around campus…lock your dorm…</p>
<p>It’s almost certainly cheaper to simply buy a lock for your computer. I’ve never heard of a locked computer being stolen (it almost certainly wouldn’t be worth the thief’s effort).</p>
<p>One of my friends has a fingerprint reader on his laptop. It’s totally not necessary. A password and lock will suffice (and I don’t even use a lock… as long as you and your roomie are practical about keeping the room locked when no one’s there, you don’t even need a lock).</p>
<p>And this goes under College Admissions because…?</p>
<p>I’d say no, what if your hands get dirty or u lose a finger? Just get a password, its not like you have goverment-data anyways so no point in locking-down your laptop so much</p>
<p>If you want a Sony Vaio I would personally go for the FZ series although that has no fingerprint reader. If your so worried though about it being stolen, just get this software called Lo-Jack or something like that. If it gets stolen, the police will be able to trace it with the username/password and recover it.</p>
<p>I just got one with my HP dv6500t (it was either a fingerprint reader or an integrated webcam, so I went with the reader).</p>
<p>You can scan multiple fingers, and in fact it’s recommended that you do so. And why would you use your computer with dirty hands?</p>
<p>It’s probably not going to be a huge theft deterrent, but it will keep people from looking at your stuff. I’m a geek, so I think it’s cool, and it was worth it for me. <em>shrugs</em> Plus it saves you from having to type a password in every time to log in…</p>
<p>Nope! My laptop has one and 2 years later, it still hasn’t been set. The computer guys “strongly encouraged”/wouldn’t let us set it up at orientation because they said it made it more difficult for them to work on since they wouldn’t have your finger present in the case that you had to take your computer in for service and they’d have to use “alternate means” to get to your info instead of just knowing your password…idk, that’s just what they said. and so far I’ve been fine without it. (If you press CTRL ALT DELETE and shut down and lock computer, it’s password protected to get to your info, so that should be enough security for what’s on your computer, esp. when combined with a password request when the computer is turned on)</p>
<p>people seem to be a little misinformed here, when people steal laptops, they sell them right away. Nothing is more incriminating than being in possession of a stolen laptop. Once they steal it, they format the hard drive and sell it.</p>