One of the things I've heard about laptops recently is that manufacturers are making it impossible to run the machine without the original hard drive. And that the hard drive, once removed, becomes encrypted. It can only be opened in the machine it came with.

I would think that the only true way to track a laptop is to have some type of beacon built on the motherboard. Something either soldered to the board or built into the CPU.

Personally, educating your users on how to look after laptops is a good way to help cut down laptop loss.

Englishgirl: I have a laptop backpack. They are great, just on helping the back anyways. My only problem is that I can't put much else in it after my laptop is in there (a panasonic tough book).