Actually, you could make sure it's always in proximity with your cell phone and detonate if the signal (bluetooth?) is lost for too many minutes.
Just remember to always bring your laptop with you (or leave you cell phone behind if you leave your laptop).

That's what I've always though. Yet a comment further up suggested UEFI tracking might be possible. There's nothing implemented (yet) that I know anyway.

The op clearly states he doesn't want to loose the laptop due to it's cost, not because of the information it contains.

Truecrypt is cool for windows, but the op clearly uses Linux. In his case LUKS is fine for FDE, or ecryptfs for his home partition (Ubuntu let you set this up when you first login as well).

For that to work, you need to give the theif full access to your laptop. Say goodbye to FDE, or any sort of privacy.

The problem with Prey, is that the thief needs to turn on your computer, and connect it to the network. This means giving him access to it. This discards full disk encryption. This, in turn, means that thieves get full access to all your data.

I've often come across the dilema. I prefer to run FDE, and permanently loose my laptop if it gets stolen, being able to sleep knowing no personal data has been leaked.

Next on slashdot: After the current sunday we'll have a Monday!

It's funny how there's huge amounts of people criticizing flash on slashdot every day, and then we have an article with a flash video (I can only assume it's a video, since I don't run flash) attached to it.

Do these guys even know how their target audience is?

It is purely online.
Your problem is that you don't have any BTC.

The Internet can be used with as little as a computer. But you still need to make a phonecall to request the service to your ISP.

I just traded 300USD worth in bitcoins about half an hour ago. I fail to see how Visa, MC or PP were involved.
Bank transfers work fine too.

DLNA es really a bunch of protocols stuck together; and most of then are the "alternative" to an RFC. I'd rather see support for standarized protocols than a handful some alliance picked.
"video recorded on SAMSUNG devices"? Really? That's your reference format? It doesn't even have a name!?

Windows Media Center has detected a change in the channel you're viewing. Please restart you TV for the changes to take effect.

Even assuming that you have no choice but to use MS Windows, they actually sell newer software with lots of support remaining.
How is holding a monopoly relevant to purchasing that the monopolist is telling you NOT TO buy anymore?

Yes, how simple. Even in successful cases, just lose a day's work and struggle for a few weeks making it a lossmaking adventure for most people; to say nothing of the countless unsuccessful cases.

a) It's pretty hard to find a new machine with XP preinstalled nowadaya. And I mean really hard! Why would you even bother searching for one if you don't want XP?
b) Why the hell did you buy a computer with a pre-installed OS if you didn't want it? My above statement applied to someone who purchased a box set and wanted to return it.

Why not? Are you assuming that either has lots of OS-specific tweaks that tilt that so much?
In any case, it's still relevant which is faster for average joe out there.

I only restart firefox after an upgrade, and that's the only time I close it. I'm sure as hell I'm not the only one.

Regrettable, yes, I've seen lots of people out there with shinny new laptops with win8 installed.

Geeks don't generally prefer Chrome. Sure, there's a good deal of chrome users amongst geeks, but I think we have a greater proporiton of firefox users than non-geeks have.