My MBP 15.4" was stolen today

COMtnBiker said:

I'm probably covered through work.

Jut a lesson to be learned, though....

- backup all your stuff
- password protect everything you can
- encrypt what you can

Losing a $2k laptop is bad enough. Thinking of the thousands of emails and personal data that's on there is horrific.

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One more:

- don't leave valuable items sitting in plain sight within your car.

So many of my users have been the victim of this (at work). Thieves see an easy "smash and grab" and they won't think twice about it. The same goes for iPods and GPS systems.

I'm always reminding my wife of this when she leaves her iPod sitting out. It seems so simple, but many people are just too trusting.

Sorry to hear about your loss.

Just to play devil's advocate, what incentive does the pawn shop have in telling the truth? I would like to have seen the computer's serial number with my own 2 eyes on the booted up machine. I don't know the law, but isn't it safe to assume the pawn shop would be out the amount of money paid for the laptop if it was proven to be stolen? You can have one of your friends go in and pretend to be interested in buying it to see.

Sorry to hear about your loss. Good luck in finding it.

sonaro said:

Just to play devil's advocate, what incentive does the pawn shop have in telling the truth? I would like to have seen the computer's serial number with my own 2 eyes on the booted up machine. I don't know the law, but isn't it safe to assume the pawn shop would be out the amount of money paid for the laptop if it was proven to be stolen? You can have one of your friends go in and pretend to be interested in buying it to see.

Sorry to hear about your loss. Good luck in finding it.

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True. I'll go back and ask to look at the actual laptop.

They said there's a 2 week waiting period where they send the serial number to the police and if they don't hear back, they can sell the item. Now... who's to say the police dept have the time to look through all that or that the serial number is written down correctly (on accident or on purpose?).

The pawn shop lady made it sound like the rules are very clear and they follow them verbatim. Not sure if that's perception or reality.

I have one email account that I'm going to leave "untouched". I can see when I go to the web-browser login if that account has been checked with my MacBook or not. At lease that way, I'll know if the password has been hacked or not. And when it is, I can then lose sleep knowing some stranger is using my MacBook and has access to all my emails and documents. .

By the way, the serial number ends in "L1G0"

Not sure how effective this would be but if I packed mine with me all the time
might have to consider it. Computrace LoJack for Laptops Standard - One Year Subscription - Apple Store (U.S.)

There seems to a few Macbook Pros in the Denver area, most are genuine sales

It would help if you gave us the exact specs (RAM, OS and hard drive), that way if anybody comes across a suspicious sale we could tip you off

Casual thieves are not always that bright, so chances are it's still in Denver

louishen said:

It would help if you gave us the exact specs (RAM, OS and hard drive), that way if anybody comes across a suspicious sale we could tip you off

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The hardware specs are stock:
2.4 GHz
2 GB RAM
250 GB hard drive

A few distinguishing features IF the hard drive hasn't been wiped... I realize all this could be changed, but as you say, the common thief is probably lazy and not all that computer literate...

- Chronosync is installed for background syncing, so if you login anywhere but my work network, you'll get three "Network Connection Unavailable" (or something like that) windows that pop up

- it has Verizon Broadband VZAccess loaded for a USB broadband connection. USB may or maynot be there, but the VZW software is in the dock

I guess these and all the other stuff is going to make it quite obvious that its stolen. Nobody's going to sell their own laptop with all their data on it. I have to assume they'll either wipe the hard drive or the new owner will already suspect that it is stolen and either try to contact me or just look at a few of my documents, family pictures, get bored and eventually erase them!

The notebook itself looks exactly as they all do from the factory. Silver with no scratches or anything.