Fingerprint authentication solutions

At my previous employer - 3 years back - they tried many of the models, but I don't recall all the names. They certainly weren't perfect - a finger cut or greasy fingers could mean needing to scan the finger print a number of times. Even the way that the finger is pressed against the scanner makes a difference.

Retinal scanners are much better, but much more expensive.

James

I have worked with the Microsoft and APC fingerprint readers, with the expectation that these would be useful to some of my small business clients, at a low (approx $50) per unit cost. First, the good news. It is kind of fun to scan your fingertip instead of having to type a long and complex pass phrase. Unfortunately, they only worked about 80% of the time, and they would not work at all as a password manager for non-Microsoft products, i.e., Firefox, Act!, etc. When they did not malfunction, they worked to login to Windows, web sites when using IE, and Microsoft Outlook (but DO NOT use them for more than one email account, because they want to use the same username and password for all!!!). Lastly, although it is possible to set up security on Windows XP Professional to ONLY allow login via fingerprint reader, it took me under a minute to figure out how to login with my passphrase.

Hopefully, more expensive units are more useful as security devices. In my opinion, the two I used are just toys.

Good luck.

Craig Herberg
http://info-safety.com