Late Night PC

Well I spent some of my morning updating [i]most[/i] of my passwords. I currently have 39 different accounts spread throughout my work and personal life and I find it essential to keep all the accounts synchronized to the same password to avoid mental strain and anguish. To facilitate this, I keep a text file of all the sites that need to be updated that looks a bit like this: [quote] + Helium password (schiller) + Helium password (Administrator) + Perforce (schiller) - gamedev.net (rypyr) - jeff_schiller hotmail + CMBP password + DOORS password + CodeDread forum password - LateNightPC forum password - LateNightPC photos password - LateNightPC mambo password + ProgrammersHeaven.com (jeff_schiller) + Big Cartoon Database (jeff_schiller) - Amazon (jeff_schiller@hotmail.com) + Golden Age Cartoons (Jeff) + AIM (JffSchll -> through Trillian) + Yahoo (jeff_schiller, through Trillian?) [/quote] Each line represents a site or account that I need to update. If I need reminders of the user name that I have I put it in parentheses next to the site. Now when I need to update my passwords, I go to the appropriate site, change the password and change the symbol next to the line in my textfile from a '+' to a '-'. (for instance, the above text file shows that I've already updated my LateNightPC account[b][i][u]s[/u][/i][/b] and my GameDev, Hotmail and Amazon account for the new password). When I need to change my passwords again (say 60 days from now), I toggle from '-' back to '+'. I spend the next day or so in my spare time going to each site and updating passwords (which can take anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes as I have to remember how to navigate and change the password, etc). Such a password management scheme has the obvious benefit that one password can be used at all sites and it also prevents you from having to store your password(s) in a text file as it's easy to remember 1 (or 2) passwords. However it suffers from the following drawbacks: - you are limited to the most restrictive length and character set of passwords in all the sites (i.e. some sites don't allow special characters like #&@, etc). Luckily all my accounts currently support 8 characters except one which I keep in a separate location... - depending on how many accounts you have, it takes a LONG time to get things in synch (all told I would say it took me at least 1.5 full hour of time) - you are "forced" to change all your passwords at a frequency dictated by the site that has the shortest password change interval (i.e. if one account requires you to change your password every 120 days and another requires you to change your password every 60 days, you have to change all your passwords every 60 days). I'd be curious to know what other people do to manage their passwords? Do you keep a text file that has account names and passwords on your computer? What do people think of my above technique? Too much administration required? Regards, Jeff