Has any used either of these apps for recovering a lost or stole iBook/Powerbook? Do you know of a good alternative? Do these kinds of apps work at all?

LapCop

PhoneHome

Originally Posted by DavidTO Has any used either of these apps for recovering a lost or stole iBook/Powerbook? Do you know of a good alternative? Do these kinds of apps work at all? LapCop PhoneHome

lojack for laptops! i love it

I used LapCop for a while but the way it worked (at least back then) was to send out a periodic beacon to their server identifying the PowerBook and its network location. I took a closer look and saw that my name and address was in there. Understandable, but I was uncomfortable with that so I stopped using it. The concept is fine but at least the version I used, I wish they had used a less revealing unique identifier. It may work in a better way now so you might want to check with them.

If there is no easy way to get my PowerBook back I'll let insurance replace it with a current model. The hardware is easily replaceable. The only concerns are that the personal data be secured (not accessible to a thief) and recently backed up. As long as that's true, I can restore data to any other Mac I can get my hands on. Sensitive files are stored on an encrypted disk image on the laptop.