Aspire One: seeking for tips (or hacks)

Hi to everyone!
I've bought an Aspire One A150L these past few days and I'm content with this purchase so far (apart from the lack of a customizable firewall, but this is another story).
There are a few things that ain't clear to me, yet, so hope you can help.
First of all, is there a way to protect the system with a password when it boots up?
You know, I'd not like to expose all my secret stuff to the first person who takes the netbook in his hands.
Further, is it possible to activate the system sounds, in order to, for example, generate a sound when a new email message arrives?
Last but not least, how to clone or back the whole system up, considering there's no optical drive in the netbook small case?
Thanks in advance to anyone who'll answer.

Burroughs.

 

You can set a boot password from the BIOS setup page, but hitting F2 when the machine switches on. As for the other stuff, what operating system do you have?

 

On my netbook I have Linpus, on my notebook Slackware 12.1.
Anyway, guess I've solved the problem about backing the system up: I've installed Clonezilla Live (a good cloning program) on my USB flash drive.
This way I can clone my netbook onto a USB hard drive, without too many efforts... ;-)
Any tips about activating system sounds just like on KDE?

Burroughs.

 

I would also install truecrypt for those sensitive secret files

 

I have just bought a new Acer Aspire One and one of the games includes Checkers. However it is asking me for a user key to unlock. Can anyone help please? Thanks

 

Quite a few of the games including Checkers are just demos, so if you want to play them properly you'll need to buy the full version.