What can be done about laptop theft?  It can be frustrating knowing you lost $1000 worth of equipment, but what about the invaluable data on it?

First of all you don't want to lose it, but even worse you don't want the thief to have that data.

In this scenario the only option is to be prepared.  Install a remote access program that doesn't rely on being at one point such as Team Viewer or GoToMyPC.  There is even applications that is specifically geared towards deleting all data when the laptop is stolen, but remote access programs allow us to have a bit more fun.

After the laptop is stolen try and login to your laptop, once you get into it I would recommend using the file viewer to recover the data you want and delete the rest immediately.  Don't use the remote desktop part to do this!!! That will alert them and stop access.  Team Viewer has a file transfer option, use that.

Once the data is secure, lets have a little fun.  Start up the remote desktop portion of your remote access program.  You can see whatever they are doing, and you can do stuff for them.  If you want to recover your laptop I would not recommend doing that though as they might discard the laptop.

If you want to recover your laptop then buy laptops that are lojack compatible.  A full list of compatible laptops are listed here.