Dead-Finger Tech: My three "must have" bits of tech!

When I was asked to come up with a list of my "Dead-Finger Tech" of things that my IT day revolves around, it took me about 2.5 seconds to come up with my top three things.

Gadget: IronKey 8GB

I have literally hundreds of USB flash drives littered about the place, but my every-day carry is an IronKey 8GB. The problem with regular flash drives is that I either had to encrypt the data that was on the drive or just take a chance that I wouldn’t lose it. I don’t have this any more thanks to the IronKey. Everything in strongly encrypted automatically.

The IronKey is a USB flash drive with a difference. Not only do you have an ultra-tough and waterproof drive where the delicate innards are protected by being encased in hard epoxy and then then wrapped in a tough metal shell (believe me, this thing is tough) but you get all the benefits of always-on hardware encryption. No more having to mess about with software driver of applications. Because all the encryption is done by hardware all the data is protected against cold-boot and brute force attacks.

At $199 for 8GB, the IronKey isn't cheap, but it's also no ordinary flash drive. If you fear losing your data, then the IronKey is a mush-have gadget.

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Peripheral: LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo

I hate printing out envelopes and labels using a regular printer. Absolutely hate it. then a few years ago I bought my first LabelWriter printer and my life changed.

A little while ago I upgraded to old LabelWriter 400 to the newer LabelWriter 450 Twin Turbo. Why? Because I can load two different rolls of labels into this puppy and print out large and small labels with the minimum of fuss.

This thing is fast too, capable of pumping out labels at the rate of 71 per minute. Also, it just works. I've never had a LabelWriter jam up or foul up when printing.

Priced at around $210 it's not cheap, but if you print labels regularly, it's well worth the money!

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Software: PasswordSafe

Choosing a software product to go into my "Dead-Finger Tech" was easy. There's on app that I turn to literally dozens to times a day, have it installed on all my PCs, and also take it with me - PasswordSafe.

There's a lot of good reasons to like PasswordSafe - for example, it's a great password manager, it can be used to generate strong passwords, you can search through your passwords and store additional information along with the user name and password - but the feature that I like best is that I can install it onto my USB flash drives and take it with me.  

This app is a total lifesaver!

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