How to Protect your laptop's data

Due to the portable nature of laptops and netbooks, the data it holds is unfortunately always at risk of both theft and loss. While its impossible to keep your laptop 100percent safe at all times, you can ensure that your data is kept safe, even if your laptop is stolen or lost, through encrypting it.
What this means is that all your most important files will be password protected, so thieves would get it near impossible to access your data without authorised access. The technology behind encryption is somewhat complicated, but thankfully the actual process for the end-user is far simpler. One particularly easy free solution you can use is TrueCrypt, which can be downloaded from

 www.truecrypt.org.