How to Track a Lost Laptop

Nov. 15, 2002 -- You've lost your laptop at the airport. How in the world are you going to find it? Or perhaps you're worried your prized new home entertainment system is vulnerable to theft? Or that your child's pricey new bicycle might go missing in the neighborhood?

No problem, say some in the burgeoning business of electronic tracking. A built-in chip can locate them for you.

In the future, for instance, you may be able to buy a laptop with a built-in device that enables you to keep track of its whereabouts through the Global Positioning System (GPS). So, if someone has walked away with your computer, you'll know where to look. Or you could put tracking devices in that high-end television or expensive bicycle.

Indeed, while a good deal of popular attention on tracking technology has focused in the past on its controversial use to keep tabs on people — including parolees, children and the elderly — many in the industry are also taking a long look at how tracking devices might be used with inanimate objects.

It's a market dubbed "Silent Commerce" by the Chicago-based consulting firm Accenture, which is among the most bullish companies about the possibility of the new technologies. Silent commerce, claims a recent Accenture report, "is potentially as revolutionary as the Internet and World Wide Web."

While that's a bolder claim than some in the industry are willing to make, many do believe tracking devices has a bright future.

What Is 'Silent Commerce'?

"We're really at the first stages of figuring out the possible applications," says Matthew Cossolotto, a spokesman for Applied Digital Solutions of Florida. ADS specializes in devices used to track people using GPS, which was made legal for commercial use by the Clinton administration in early 2000.

Another popular tracking system is the Radio Frequency Identification method, or RFID, which uses radio waves to identify objects via tiny labels on them, but has a shorter range than GPS.

Currently, RFID devices are already used in a number of areas, from the E-Z Pass tags some cars use to pass through toll booths on the East Coast to the chips runners put on their shoes when competing in a marathon.

And both GPS and RFID have been eagerly evaluated by firms who think they see great potential in being able to expand the ways both commercial firms and consumers can keep track of valuable objects.

In fact, multiple firms are trying to add environmental sensors to both GPS and RFID devices, so that people in remote locations can gain more information about the objects they're following.

Accenture envisions a scenario in which RFID-enabled tags, complete with tiny environmental sensors, would replace bar codes on many everyday goods. That way, for instance, a dairy-products firm could make sure groceries are storing milk cartons at the right temperature.

Estimates on the industry's economic potential vary, but a report by the international marketing and consulting company Frost and Sullivan estimates the worldwide revenues for RFID-based devices to be $7.5 billion by 2006.

Size Matters

There are, however, drawbacks preventing tracking devices from being used more widely at the moment. The first is size: unwieldy or heavy devices could make some items less appealing to consumers.

"The smaller a unit, the better it could work with suitcases, laptops and other items," says Cossolotto.

According to Steve Chapin, president of Pro Tech Systems of Florida, reducing the size of tracking devices that use GPS "is the No. 1 goal" of industry firms at the moment.

Chapin thinks progress on this front is inevitable, though, and uses the cell phone as an example of a technology that has gotten smaller over time: "Ten years ago everybody was walking around with a brick, and now people have cell phones the size of a magic marker."

There are also technological barriers. GPS systems do not work indoors, while so-called "Assisted GPS" units only work in areas with cell-phone network coverage. And some tracking devices have finite power sources, such as batteries that run out.

Meanwhile, academic groups are trying to work out an open standard for RFID technologies, to encourage wider use.

Will Consumers Pay?

As with almost any other potential product, the biggest barrier to wider use of silent commerce may be cost.

Chapin, for one, questions the extent to which consumers will want to pay more for trackable goods. He claims that adding tracking capability to, say, a suitcase could cost hundreds of dollars more than regular products, and have monthly fees associated with the tracking device, too.

"Are people willing to pay for it?" asks Chapin. "Right now, I think it's a questionable business model."

Similarly, as another Accenture analysis acknowledges, even for a big manufacturer trying to incorporate silent commerce into their assembly line, "The cost of RFID technology has been the largest inhibitor of RFID growth of the last years."

Whereas a basic barcode costs just pennies, an RFID label costs at least 40 cents — too high to put on cheap, mass-produced items like milk or other food products.

Still, Cossolotto envisions many scenarios in which the cost of a GPS tracker would be well worth it. Museums, he says, could install tracking devices in the frames or pedestals of valuable works of art, helping to ensure the safety of their collections.

"If you have a painting that's worth $50 million or even one million, it would be fairly affordable to have a GPS embedded somewhere in the frame," says Cossolotto, adding that "a thief would have to strip it from the frame pretty quickly" to leave no trace at all of a stolen artwork's whereabouts.