Best free password manager? Or just recommend against it?

All of the people using NB's and constantly moving about need these.

If they didn't have then they would just set all of their passwords to the same thing. Now all they need to remember is the Password to open the Password Manager so that if their hardware gets lost/stolen the person who acquires it only needs to crack 1 Password to have access to everything. :D

Personally I don't like them but they need to be used by most people who are flat out remembering their PIN's for their Bank Cards.

I personally can still remember Part Numbers of bits that I used back with the Main Frames Days but I still have a Password Manager on my NB but mainly to be able to offer support to these people when they are OS and calling to get a way to get into their Must Do work NOW! :(

I've even seen a couple of these people storing their PIN's in their Password Managers. Quite funny to get a phone call at 2.00 AM with someone asking how to get into their Password Manager so that they can pay the Hotel to make this phone call. ;)

Col

I use Password Safe. It has been recommended by Bruce Schneier and is open source. It allows you to export database as encrypted file or text file for archiving.

http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/

But then I have a few hundred different security silos to keep track of. And I prefer to use long, randomly generated passwords. Not to mention install keys, pins, etc...

In the past, I have used password agent, which is only free is you are storing a small # of passwords (30, I think?). But quite inexpensive to purchase. IT is a good program with nice features.

More recently I have been using KeePass. It is open source, can be run form a Thumdrive (ports to U3 and PortableApps) and the current stable version has ports to most common OS's (A little bothered that the upcoming version is in .Net and thus may not be quite as platform agnostic... On the plus side, it includes a feature to foil keyloggers).

I've been using this program call MyPadlock Password Manager (mypadlock.com) for the last few months and it's really slick. So far it's the most intuitive password manager I've seen because it's so simple... seems like most of the other choices try to pack in a boat load of features you'd never use and it just clutters the interface. For me anyway, I just wanted a lightweight and secure little program to make it easy to get my usernames and passwords. Plus, it's free so hard to go wrong.