My wife uses a notebook computer. She usually has it set up on the dining room table, right in the middle of everything, in an area of the house from which she can “rule the household”, so to speak (in contrast, my computer — and office — are in the basement, which I alternately call the “underground command and control center” or the “dungeon”, depending on my mood and the type of reaction I want to get out of my wife at the time…).
Her computer has a fingerprint reader. To log on, she simply runs her finger across the reader and the system logs her on. I also have two accounts on that computer; one is the admin account and the other is a user account (yes, I practice what I preach… I use a restricted rights account for my everyday work and only use the admin account when I need to do admin things).
My wife was opening a can the other day and hurt her login finger. Thankfully she’ll be OK, but with a bandage on her finger, she couldn’t use that finger to log in to the computer.
And of course your resident genius didn’t have her register two fingers in case something like this happened…
Thankfully I was able to log in my with my “uncut” finger to the admin account, reset her password (you tend to forget them when you have a biometric access method!), and then have her log in with a userid and password (which is allowed on that computer). She then registered a backup finger and all was well.
Which leads to my point: If you rely on some type of biometric reader for system access, you should also have some sort of backup. I recommend that you register one finger from both your right and your left hand. If you have multiple accounts on a computer, then use one finger for your admin account (say your middle finger, since you won’t use your admin account as much as you will your “regular”, restricted rights account) and your index finger for your other, everyday account. Register the same finger on both hands so you have a backup.
You may also want to write down the password for at least the admin account. If you do, I recommend that you follow these suggestions for keeping your passwords secure.
Doing these things can help ensure that your system is always available.
Hope you enjoyed today’s “cutting edge” tip! 
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