The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
well good enough to prevent average joe from getting a usable laptop out of it, and not good enough to prevent real hackers or determined thieves from obtaining what they want.
BIOS password is just one layer of security, you need quite a few to truly protect your data.
It's enough of a general deterrent. If anyone wants your data badly enough, they can get it, that's the reality. But, usually, it's not worth the effort required.
The BIOS password will lockout the system from being usable but unless you took preventative measures it will not conceal contents on the hard drive as anyone can take it out and plug it in to another system. To combat that problem you'll need to encypt the hard drive data (i.e. Bitlocker, Truecrypt) which should prevent your data being accessed by unauthorised users.
As others have stated, it all depends. Also realize with hard drive passwords and BIOS passwords, if your motherboard/drive dies it just makes data recovery and getting back onto your feet just that more difficult.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
