Tom's Tuesday Tech Tip: Legal Nurse Consultants Should Always Have Locks with Their Bagels

We’ve all been there – in a Starbucks^® with our laptops, drinking coffee and munching on a bagel or other tasty snack while working on our legal nurse consulting business or waiting for an appointment with an attorney-client. Then, right after the third vente skinny latte, you guessed it, it’s restroom time. I know that nurses can (and often do) go for weeks without using the restroom, but sometimes duty just plain calls. When that happens, what do you do with your laptop?

First of all, you can’t take it with you. A restroom isn’t a safe place for a laptop, not just for the obvious sanitary reasons, but because it’s got a good chance of being dropped too. Leaving it unattended on a table isn’t that safe either. Laptops are great targets of opportunity for miscreants and in the seconds it took you to order a fourth latte your laptop may be on the way to a pawnshop.

So what’s a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant to do? Simple, get yourself a Kensington Laptop Cable Lock. They come with combination locks or keyed locks and a 6-ft cable you can use to secure your laptop to a table, chair or nearest heavy object, thus making it more difficult for a thief to snatch and grab. Every modern laptop, and even Macs, come with a small slot for a Kensington-style lock for just this purpose. Once you’ve got your laptop secured, you can safely take that restroom break you’ve been putting off.

I’ve had several of these over the years and use them to secure Vickie’s and my laptops in hotels, at legal conferences and any other place there’s a chance of them walking away. Some things to be aware of – I prefer the keyed locks, I find the combinations hard to see and neither will deter a serious thief who’s carrying around a set of cable or bolt cutters. It will however, deter the casual thief and sure beats slipping your laptop under the hotel mattress when you join an attorney-client for dinner! If you’re stepping out, the hotel room safe is probably your best bet for securing a laptop. A cable lock is a great choice for my more mobile CLNC^® amigos who use their systems on the go.

Now you can enjoy that fifth latte with the security of knowing your laptop will be there when you get back! Just be sure to engage the screen lock when you go too.

Keep on techin’,