Small Transmitters

Why not sellotape a mobile phone to the laptop?

Then while you are tracing the mobile you could have a chat with the thief...

John.

Lambent humour!

Pretty clever :)

http://www.absolute.com/solutions-theft-recovery.asp

Yeah, they really have a market here. My laptop came with their software installed in the BIOS already.

To my understanding, it pings their main-server occasionally when you have an internet connection. If it is reported stolen then they trace the ISP, IP, and hand it over to the police. Oh, this can be disabled if you are smart but what can't be circumvented?

As for GPS tracker: the commonly available ones are fairly big for a laptop. They are more for tracking trucking fleets. They sometimes use killswitches and other tricks to prevent theft.

In the movie "Enemy of the State" they use super-tiny GPS locators.

The new Apple iPhone triangulates its location in the cellular grid by tower locations and signal strength. The resolution is worse than what you can get with GPS, of course, but it's a start. And radiosonde manufacturers have for years wished for a tiny, cheap, disposable GPS receiver for their 'sondes. Maybe they've got something already.

-e

Most cellphones already have GPS or triangulate for 911 calls. About time they tapped into it more.

GPS is nice but there are too many things that can go wrong. I like the "phone home" method better - depends on Internet connection, but then who steals computer but doesn't use the Internet (or pass by open WiFi at Starbucks for that matter). The "phone home" method depends on many factors as well, but I think there's a pretty good chance the laptop will eventually try to hit the Internet.

I have seen something like this, but it may have been software.

It would be great if it were integrated inside cmos, to report weekly or monthly that a computer is online.

Given a warrant, pinpointing the location is performed.