If you have a laptop which you regularly carry around, a concern is the security of data on the laptop should it be lost or stolen. As such, if you have confidential or private data stored on your laptop, it is strongly recommended that this data be encrypted to protect it in the event your laptop goes walk-about. Mac OS X Leopard has FileVault built into the operating system and Windows Vista Ultimate and Enterprise Editions have BitLocker. However, if you are not running one of these high-end Vista Editions you will need to look for an alternative. TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org) is an open-source encryption program which is highly secure and even allows for the encryption of entire boot volumes.