Laptops are small, portable and lightweight devices that can be carried almost anywhere with a minimum amount of effort. However, their greatest advantage, portability, seems to also be their weakest spot. Thieves can easily snatch your unit while you are looking away, leaving you without both your favorite toy and your precious data.

The advent of tracking technology is alleged to make thieves' lives a lot harder, and allow the unfortunate notebook owners to recover their precious devices. Tracking devices have already accounted for a couple of tech thieves sent in jail in countries such as Argentina, Macedonia and Saudi Arabia.

West Midlands Police, for instance, used the technology to catch more than 30 thieves, then return the stolen goods to their rightful owners. According to Alan McInnes, general manager with the Association of Chief Police Officers crime prevention initiatives, the anti-theft measures will help authorities fight laptop and mobile phone theft.

"The more widely this technology is used, the more the risk goes up and the more it will devalue the attractiveness of computer theft," McInnes said. "This tracking technology has already proven itself useful for recovering large numbers of cars, its success rate is about 95 percent, and we hope it will do the same for computers. You not only recover the stolen property you are looking for, you often will uncover more stolen property and other related crimes."

The most efficient method for tracking a notebook is using a BIOS-enabled anti-theft application, that can report to the tracking center even if the hard-disk drive has been formatted or even tossed away and replaced. This technology is developed by Absolute Software and will be included in Intel's upcoming Anti-Theft Technology.

When the stolen notebook is connected to the web, it will automatically report to the monitoring center, then send the offender's IP address. Authorities can track the physical address, then break in and arrest the perpetrator. Absolute's ComputraceOne software application helped police recover more than 5,000 computers until now.