Mitigating gadget theft at work.

April 6, 2009 1:57 PM

I already bring my kindle and iphone to work. I'm considering bringing an iliad as well, and I'm worried about theft... What can I do?

I already bring my kindle and iphone to work and leave them in my lunch box. I'm not really worried too much about them being stolen because only my co workers see that I bring them at all (I work at mills/other large industrial sites, so there are always lots of people who could be around anywhere). I'm about to buy an irex iliad, so that I have a device for reading math, physics, and whatnot, since my books on those are in pdf and would be mangled to death on my kindle. But, while I wasn't worried when it was just my kindle/iphone, I realize that as I add more gadgets, it's more likely people will notice and talk about it, and also a much higher cost if someone does walk off with my lunchbox. I'm just curious what everyone thinks about how likely this is, or rather how much more likely it is if I add an iliad in, and also what I might do to prevent it? Aside from just not bringing them: they are my means to study/read on breaks, and maintain my sanity. That's a must.

posted by tehgeekmeister to Work & Money (5 answers total)

(Outside the scope of your question, but are you suggesting bringing in the Kindle and the Iliad? If so, isn't that a little excessive - why would you need two ebook readers on the same day? And surely your Iphone would be in your pocket? Of course, you may have to empty your pockets for your line of work.)

I've got an Iliad and the question of how much effort I should expend on keeping it safe has occurred to me too. Some random thoughts:

* The device is for using. You could keep it perfectly safe by leaving it locked up in a strongbox, but what would the point be?
* The Iliad is expensive and it would hurt losing it, but it's not laptop expensive.
* Conversely, leaving UKP1000+ of small and easily takeable electronic gear in one place seems foolish.
* It's such an odd device, it would seem unlikely anyone would take it. Mostly they wouldn't know what it was. If your Iphone - a much more attractive bit of kit - hasn't gone missing, I wouldn't think a e-reader would.
* It's small enough that you should be able to find somewhere to put it away - a lockable drawer for example.
* Labelling or marking your gear will have no effect - the goods are taken before the thief sees the
* Not flashing something around or advertising it's presence is a good way to prevent any thieves from taking it.
* In a workplace, casual theft (crimes of opportunity) are more likely than any concerted effort to take your things. Thus, simple measures to hide or prevent casual swiping of your stuff should be sufficient.

In summary: it seems foolish to leave all your personal electronics in one easily steal-able package, but there's no need to go overboard. Find a lockable drawer, put your stuff down in a filing cabinet.
posted by outlier at 2:29 PM on April 6, 2009

IIRC, the iPhone can read PDFs natively, but you have to email them to yourself. If you can live without the e-ink screen, that'd be the way to avoid the problem altogether.
posted by ConstantineXVI at 2:30 PM on April 6, 2009

Or put the PDFs on googledocs and then access them from the iphone, but this may not be ideal for reading anything with complicated diagrams
posted by Flitcraft at 3:06 PM on April 6, 2009

Laptops have a lock port; you can attach a cable lock to discourage casual theft. I can't see that the Illiad has a lock port. You can superglue a loop onto the device, then use a laptop lock to secure the device to something that makes it less easy to steal.
posted by theora55 at 4:04 PM on April 6, 2009

Evernote is supposed to support PDFs, too. But I haven't tested that feature yet. They have an iPhone client.
posted by wheat at 6:41 AM on April 7, 2009