Do I really need a password on my laptop? I have an Apple laptop and the biggest bind when using it is that I am constantly being asked for passwords. If I only had to remember one password I could manage, but of course life isn't that simple. I live alone and nobody else uses the laptop. Is there any way I can have a password-free laptop? John Jenkins, by email Passwords and PINs are a necessary evil these days, to protect our privacy and security but the stronger they are, the harder they are to memorise. Incidentally, one easy way to create a long and memorable password is to take the first letters from a line or title of a song. Of course it's tempting to simply jot them down on a piece of paper or store them on a file on your PC but that's asking for trouble. Laptops are especially vulnerable to being lost or stolen, and although the risk of hacking is very low on a Mac, it can be done. Fortunately you have a useful password manager program on your Mac, called Keychain Access. You may have noticed it asking if it can remember a password when logging on to web sites. It stores all of your passwords and PINs in a highly encrypted form, but you only need one master password to get at them, or add new ones like ATM PINs and so on. You'll find Keychain Access in the Applications > Utilities folder. Windows doesn't have an equivalent facility but there are plenty of excellent freeware password managers to choose from, including KeePass (Mac and Linux versions also available from: http://goo.gl/oILn) and PasswordSafe (http://goo.gl/xCc3).