Wave Systems Corp. (fka WAVXQ)

[RootOfTrust]

Weby, you wrote:

I'm a consumer, typing on a computer with a TPM and right now it's essentially useless.

Actually if you have initialized your TPM, and use your pre-boot authentication environment, it's impossible for an attacker who's stolen your machine to boot it up. The fingerprint keys are stored encrypted on the TPM. Now, if your drive is not an SED, the thief in possession of your machine might be able to read your files w/o booting the machine up? I believe so.

So, you and I (I have a Latitude D630 w/ activated TPM) have secured our machine from being booted up by a thief in physical possession of it...our TPM enables that. An SED (or trusted drive that requires authentication to the drive) however, accomplishes the same thing and more (data is encrypted) w/o using a TPM, because the drive is completely locked down independent of the TPM.

Btw, my pre-boot is beautiful. One swipe of my finger and the machine goes from pre-boot to Windows every time...either from the power-up or from sleep/hibernation.