Tracking a stolen laptop?

[Gunwave]

If my laptop was stolen, is their a way I can track down my laptop if you the thief decides to go online with it?

Is that possible?

[w31n3r]

...if you the thief decides to go online with it?

Is that possible?

lol, how can you be sure it was i who stole it...

sorry , but you're SOL. i've heard of a few with gimmicky call back features, but any thief with half a brain would brush those aside. you have my sympathies...

[charlesmelissa]

Once it is stolen it is too late. With your next laptop there is a service you can get that will write an ID on a hard drive that will "call home" even if the hard drive is formatted. It writes to the BIOS and will call in it's location.

[Gunwave]

Once it is stolen it is too late. With your next laptop there is a service you can get that will write an ID on a hard drive that will "call home" even if the hard drive is formatted. It writes to the BIOS and will call in it's location.
Damn. ):

Isn't their some way that I can track down the laptops location if know the IP address or something like that.

Sorry, if I'm not making any sense, I really don't know much about IP address.

[wapazoid]

The IP address is provided by an ISP. The address that was assigned to your laptop won't be the same as the one the thief gets when he connects to the net from different modem or network. Well, unless the bastard is actually a sibling that's just playing a prank. :icon_pira

I hope the laptop wasn't too expensive.

[chito37]

just buy another one, they are getting cheaper to buy.

[kokanezub]

I would really recommend ditching your laptop and getting a desktop. I did just that and got rid of my Toshiba laptop and got an HP slimline PC. The results are amazing

[RACKnRAIL]

The technology exists for cars and it costs a lot of money, but for laptops, you're out of luck.

[Malakai1911]

I would really recommend ditching your laptop and getting a desktop. I did just that and got rid of my Toshiba laptop and got an HP slimline PC. The results are amazing

I highly prefer my laptop over a desktop. I can take it anywhere and it's loaded.

Dell Vostro 1500: 15.4" WXGA TrueLife, Core 2 Duo T7250 (2.0 GHz), nVidia GeForce 8600M GT (256MB), 160GB 7200RPM HD w/Free Fall Sensor, 1GB RAM, 8x DVD+/-RW, 802.11g, 9 cell battery, Vista Home Basic, 2 Year Warranty w/NBD On-Site Service.
Subtotal w/SH+Tax: $803.xx

Aftermarket Upgrades: 4GB OCZ PC2-5400 DDR2 Kit ($70 on sale), Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 (Free, Genuine.)
Subtotal: $70.xx

Total Price: $873.xx

[Smokie89]

u go that right Malakai1911

[Gunwave]

Oh well, thanks for the replies.

[1cooldude]

As you're an unfortunate victim of this event, I thought to paste an article from a recent reading about a very common type of a theft at our airports. If you're flying and carrying your laptop, then be very diligent with this environment.

As we've seen, laptops have a tendency of getting stolen from even the most unsuspecting places, but a new study has now found one not entirely surprising place where your laptop is particularly unsafe: the airport. According to the Ponemon Institute, more than 10,000 laptops are reported lost at the 36 largest airports in the US each week and, of those, 65 percent are not reclaimed. They also reported a further 2,000 laptops lost at medium-sized airports, with 69 percent of those not reclaimed. According to the institute, folks also aren't very confident that they'll ever see their laptop again once it goes missing, with 77 percent of the people surveyed saying they had "no hope" of ever recovering a laptop lost at the airport, and 16 percent saying they wouldn't even do anything to attempt to recover it. Of course, there's no shortage of suggestions out there for preventing your laptop from getting lost or stolen, and Network World's Richard Stiennon has a couple of good ones at the link below.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29548

[charlesmelissa]

There was an article yesterday that Dell will have a $299.00 laptop by the end of August. There is a replacement.

[Feather]

http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/

here is a free open source tracking software.
I know it is a little late but for others looking for this.

[mountain_rage]

http://www.mantracker.ca/images/TRAILER.jpg (http://www.mantracker.ca/)

Probably too late now, but Mantracker would of really handed it to the guy that stole your laptop.

[shawners]

Actually you have to do the measures to prevent it from being stolen. I saw this news story. A lady had 1500 dollars of photo equipment in her bag.. DSLR camera and the works.. She left it at a restaurant. So they claim no one turned it in.. But little did she know she had a WIFI SD card chip in her DSL camera. It detects a WIFI spot and would upload photos online to her storage account. A few days later she gets a email notify that her photos was uploaded. The people who stole the camera took pictures of themselfs and when they came in a area with a wifi connection, it uploaded it. She showed the pictures to the restaurant manager and one of the people who stole it was a waiter. The guy got fired and returned her stuff.. She didnt press charges but you need to take preventive measures before it gets stolen.

[sheriff 01]

what thats some story shawners, and to think that the person who stole it would be that dumb!