Well, today I was taking the bus home, minding my own business, showing a friend a game on my laptop...when suddenly, out of nowhere, someone grabs the laptop and runs off. Despite my attempts to get it back, they got away. I did contact the police but I guess I shouldn't get my hopes up for them getting it back. Fortunately, by coincidence I had backed up the information a few days before, so I didn't lose much.

The good news (which I wish I had known before) is that there's actually some software that can help you out. For example, "Undercover" for Mac OS X has several neat features: If your laptop gets stolen and is used to connect to the internet, it'll secretly transmit information on its exact location (and, if you have a built-in camera, take pictures of the user!) to the company, which will obviously greatly aid the police in getting it back. Other similar software is XTool (for Mac also), ZTrace (Windows), Computrace (Windows again) and Cyberangel (Windows again!).

Other smart things are to use any kind of file encryption that comes with your operating system. That way, even if you don't get it back, at least you can be pretty sure that they won't get any data from it.

Finally, back up information. This isn't just for theft; if your computer stops working, it's possible that fixing it would require erasing the memory or replacing it, in which case you'd be stuck without it. Backing up frequently is always a good idea.

Well, just some advice so if your laptop gets stolen, you might be able to get it back and can rest somewhat easy about the data in it.

Most tech-savvy laptop users regularly have a 3-machine setup: their laptop (for general needs), an often very powerful desktop, and an extra low-to-regular-end desktop working as general server (print server, general file server, and backup file server). I've found this setup is highly reliable when it comes to backing data up, since as long as you protect and keep the server running in good health, and you make digital backups of the file backups in the server (burning to DVDs and such), there's very little you can be afraid of in terms of data loss. =)

It should go without saying that you should always back up your data regularly, too. =p

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Good news! The police caught the thieves and got my laptop back! I'm using it right now!

Glad to hear you're back on your own waters. =)

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