BarlowBrad writes "Yesterday my house was broken into and among other things two laptops were stolen. Getting past the feeling of violation, I am looking to the future and how to both prevent theft and recover computers should it happen again. I have found various services that claim to track and recover stolen laptops such as LoJack for Laptops, Computrace, GadgetTrak and Undercover, but I (obviously) have no experience with any of them. I also know that Intel will be coming out with a new anti-theft technology chip, but that isn't supposed to come out until the fourth quarter and I'll be replacing the laptops before then. Does Slashdot have a recommendation between these services or suggestions for another?
I have also wondered if there is a "home brew" solution that I could cook up myself. I'm not an elite programmer, but I am somewhat computer savvy and open to ideas. At least one of the replacement laptops will have to be a Windows machine, but the other may be a Mac or run Linux, so ideally I'd want a solution for multiple platforms. Perhaps a script that sends an email with the IP address every time the computer connects to the internet? Or is there already something out there like that in the Open Source community?"
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You'd probably want a full traceroute to somewhere, not just the local IP address. If someone has a home network using 192.168.x.x, that doesn't really help much. If they're using as ISP that puts everyone behind a NAT, then whatever public IP they come from probably doesn't help much either.
/me wonders if it's possible to get a GPS thingy that can go inside a laptop
More than just IP address. (Score:2)
You'd probably want a full traceroute to somewhere, not just the local IP address. If someone has a home network using 192.168.x.x, that doesn't really help much. If they're using as ISP that puts everyone behind a NAT, then whatever public IP they come from probably doesn't help much either.
/me wonders if it's possible to get a GPS thingy that can go inside a laptop