Kensington ComboSaver Portable Laptop Combination Lock
The Kensington ComboSaver is a steel cable security lock for ‘portable’ computers that’s been specially designed to be equally ‘portable’ itself!
The Kensington ComboSaver Portable Notebook Lock (K64560EU)
As all-in-one devices designed to be easy to move, laptops remain a high value item that can benefit from being ‘physically’ restrained.
Virtually every laptop produced in recent years has a ‘Kensington-slot’ somewhere around its edge to add this physical protection option.
Kensington Lock Slot on an Apple MacBook
However, traditionally the cables available are long, heavy and only able to be bent or coiled to a very limited (large) radius - making them totally impractical things to carry or take with you if travelling.
The Kensington ComboSaver Portable lock is designed to address these issues.
The cable itself is 3.5mm thick and is steel covered in a tight and soft transparent sheath. It extends comfortably (with only minimal resistance) up to 1.8m and returns naturally - self coiling (i.e. a contracting spring) to a compact overall length of just 7.62cm after use. Total weight is 116g.
The compact lock has four wheels - each with 10 position settings (the numbers 0>9) producing 10,000 possible combinations. It has a soft rubber end plate to prevent any scratching or marking to your computer.
The lock itself, T-Bar for insertion into the computer slot is on the left.
After passing the cable around something solid, the lock is engaged by first inserting the visible T-Bar through the slot on the computer and rotating the lock barrel itself by 90 degrees (also rotating the T-Bar inside the machine).
With the combination correctly set the end button can then be pressed, this causes a second solid tab to extend from the lock through the Kensington slot on the machine. It is this second bar which prevents the lock and T-bar from being from being rotated and removed from the slot.
The number wheels should then be rotated to leave the lock attached securely.
Attached and securing a Sony VAIO laptop to a desk.
The combination can be readily changed by using a small horse-shoe shaped pin tool attached to the ‘loop-end’ of the cable. By inserting this into the button end of the lock and giving an eighth of a turn (so that the yellow markings visible above line up) the combitiion can be changed to your choice.
The loop end of the spring, complete with tool to change the combination.
Kensington encourage you to use their website to register your lock to an email address. This will enable them to later email you a reminder of the lock combination/pin should you ever forget it.
Illustrative Retail Packaging
Packaged in its box the product measures 176mm x 150mm x 33mm and weights in at just 191grams.
The best UK price is currently £19.99 online available at PC World (www.pcworld.co.uk).
Make sure you use their Collect@Store service if you want to buy it in store as it is normally priced up at double that (30 pounds) in store! Using Collect@Store you can get the web price.
[Also, if searching their site it has a poor search function and this item is found readily using 'combosaver' but not 'kensington'!]
After the use this model has been given so far, it still returns to a good coil after prolonged usage periods but does require a brief wait for the neatness of that coil to be restored.
More pictures are on the product detail page.
