The UK government is moving further into the digital age with the unveiling of the mark two version of a laptop computer, designed to enable ministers to replace the traditional red boxes in which they store their papers. While they are based on $1,300 off-the-shelf laptops, the bill for security devices to protect the nationÆs secrets is growing rapidly. In the first version, there was voice recognition technology but this has now been replaced with a smartcard and PIN number that adds $1,120 to the cost. They are now working on a final version with a fingerprint reader, which should ensure that the logging on function costs more than the machine itself.
