Al Briggs, director of mobile solutions services, was at the conference to discuss a wireless system installed primarily to benefit the field service workers at the big Atlanta-based cable provider. After his presentation, he detailed an unexpected benefit that occurred after about 15 laptops were stolen last year in Virginia.

"Some very enterprising technicians in our group" suggested that the company "try something crazy" and use its new wireless technology to "push" software to the laptops to help locate them, Briggs said.

The company happened to have a contract with Absolute Software Corp., which provides Computrace laptop security and tracking software. The software resides in a laptop's BIOS, so it can't be deleted. The company says it provides information such as telephone number, local IP address, routable IP address, MAC address, date and time when a resident laptop connects to the Internet.

Unfortunately, Computrace hadn't been activated in the laptops yet, Briggs said. So the technicians used iAnywhere Inc.'s Afaria mobile device management software to push the Computrace software to the laptops. After that, "we worked with local authorities" and recovered the laptops, Briggs said.

He said the stolen laptop story made it all the way up to the company's CIO, who validated the wireless project's value with a one-word reply: "Cool!"