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 a tough piece of software that allows you (and law enforcement) to both track your computer and remotely delete sensitive data before a thief can use it.Once downloaded, the software maintains daily contact with a monitoring center in Vancouver whenever your computer is online. If the computer is reported lost or stolen, contact increases to every 15 minutes. This allows the company's investigators to determine where the computer is and any activity that has occurred post-theft, at which point law enforcement is called.Regardless of recovery status, you can remotely delete applications, photos, bookmarks, browser cookies, financial information and stored passwords. The software is embedded in such a way that it continues to work even if the hard drive is reformatted.  And, in some cases, the company is willing to pay up to $1000 if the computer isn't found as part of their service agreement.Lojack for Laptops costs $39.99 a year (or $94.99 for a three year subscription).  But compared to losing your computer (and all the data therein), it's a small price to pay.

no software to download; easy enough for students!  

 a free web-based tool that tracks and analyzes how you spend time while at your computer.Once the application is installed it runs in the background, monitoring both your web-browsing habits and application usage. (It does stop if you get up and walk away, so lunchtime is still your time).The service does everything from assigning you a basic efficiency rating to providing categorical breakdowns of how much time you spend on different activities (using Excel would fall under "Business" while looking at cat videos would fall under "Leisure Surfing").The time-tracking reports and graphs will show you precisely how you're spending your time (by day, week, month and year) and what activities you're doing (and, by default, not doing).Those looking to get serious may want to upgrade to RescueTime Pro (the plan starts at $5.30 per month) to take advantage of extra features. One that's especially helpful is FocusTime, which allows you to block all Internet "distractions" for a specified period of time.