Your laptop has just been stolen. Wouldn't it be cool if your laptop had some kind of beacon/signal mechanism to let you know where it had been taken?
Actually, it can. There are plenty of articles and blog entries on various OS X hints and tips websites about "security on a shoe string" -- using Perl scripts, shell commands, etc to "phone home" after it's been taken from you. I've got to give credit for creativity, but . . . let's be honest here, unless you just happen to be . . . I dunno, The Batman . . . you aren't going to track it down and recover it all by yourself.
Nope, you'll need cooperation from an Internet Service Provider (HA!) and police assistance (rolls eyes) to recover your laptop. If the police department in your neighborhood is anything like mine, trying to get them to follow up with an Internet Service Provider about getting customer records for an IP address is almost as difficult as getting through an airport metal detector after you've gone bird hunting with Dick Cheney! It's not that they don't want to help, but they've got plenty of other things to take care of already, and Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol isn't a topic frequently covered in most police academies.
That's where the combination of software and service called "Lojack for Laptops" comes in. You install the software on your laptop and it "calls home" approximately every 24 hours with information about its network configuration. When you notify them that your laptop has been stolen, they activate a switch that causes the software to report more frequently-- as often as every 15 minutes. If the thief connects the laptop to the Internet, this company deals with the Internet Service provider and the police for you.
I'm gonna be honest here-- I was about 24 hours away from writing a really scathing review of this product. I bought it at a CompUSA store that is closing down, so I got a little bit of a price break on it. (I should mention-- this product appears to come in versions for Mac OS X as well as Windows, and I was using the Mac version.)
When I tried to install it the first time (a strange combination of CD and Web registration/installation), I was able to register my laptop with their web service, but there was a vague error message concerning Java when I tried to complete the installation. I was running under a login that had administrator privileges, had the latest version of Java I could run under 10.3.9, etc. I scanned through the FAQ/Troubleshooting documents for any mention of Java, but there wasn't any. I tried calling their tech support number, but they were closed on weekends. At this point, I figured "Well, I'm totally screwed! Nothing left to do but write a scathing email and kiss my money goodbye."
The following morning, I received an (automated?) email to the effect of "Hey, we saw you registered a computer with us, but the software hasn't made its first report. If you were not able to complete the installation, check these four items." Naturally, one of those four items had to do with the Java error message that I was experiencing. (Okay, it really should be in the FAQ/Troubleshooting documentation, guys-- but I will give you points for eventually getting the right info to me.) Basically, I had to create a brand new account and give it admin privs, and then run the install again. At that point, everything seemed to work fine and the software completed installation.
Overall experience? 3.5 out of 5, but ask me after my laptop gets stolen! LOL
One final thought-- recovery software is a great idea, but it isn't a silver bullet for all the issues that a laptop theft can present. Do you really want someone who is willing to steal other people's property to have access to the data you keep on your laptop? Take steps to encrypt and control access to your data-- such as the FileVault feature found in OS X. And while we are on the topic of data-- you should also be making regular, reliable backups of your data on some kind of removable media or storage device, just in case something like this DOES happen. You might want to check out Mozy.
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