That's the thing though- from what I've seen (from my friends that have had their laptops stolen and they were able to recover) is that laptop thieves aren't very smart. Just as you or I might if we stole a car, immediately drive it into a faraday cage to prevent it phoning home, and then carefully going over it, swapping VIN numbers with legit-seeming ones, swapping any electronic ignition and keys, making sure there were no tracking devices, removing the license plate and anything immediately identifiable like a bumper sticker - a huge number of car thieves do nothing of the sort.
Some teens that stole one of my friend's Vespa scooters were in their front yard with a chistle and a large hammer trying to bash the ignition column apart, and then all scattered when a cop just drove by on patrol- and easy catch for the cop.
Most of the people who steal laptops first and foremost log into their email and Facebook... and if you have a key logger and a way to capture their face on camera, that's a pretty strong way of identifying who stole it almost instantly.
