Being in the consulting business, I often write prototype software for clients in Visual Basic as proof-of-concept and also to make sure I understand the client's needs before I accept a project. On occasion, I have to leave my laptop unattended on someone's desk while I go into meetings with senior management and try to convince them that I know what I'm talking about and that I'm worth whatever (exorbitant to them) I'm asking to do their application for them. I also do volunteer programming for several volunteer organizations, and it's the same situation - unattended laptop while I wander off and chat with management to tell them why it will take so long to do the impossible. ;)
You leave your laptop turned on and out of your immediate reach? Geesh. I would NEVER leave my laptop anywhere that I didn't have it in eyeshot. It was the whole reason I got one.
As you might imagine, I have a full suite of programming tools on the laptop, including MS Office Pro and VB Pro, both of which are worth about $500 apiece - I'd sure hate to lose them to a malicious cracker, or someone who would like a personal copy of my source code for their own use, or who just wants to "borrow" my secret key for awhile.
Business must be good, you are more worried about somebody stealing a $500 dollar program than a several thousand dollar laptop?
What do people recommend as the solution for this? Some sort of IDEA-based or triple-DES-based device driver would seem to be the answer to this, but I'm not sure which is the "best" (most reliable, fastest, easiest to set up) one to use. I like the sound of Michael Sattler's encryption driver for the Mac, but alas, I'm running MS-DOS :(
Try Lo-Jak so that when your laptop goes a wanderin' you can find it....:)