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A couple of months ago, we took note of a White Plains, N.Y. man that caught the thief who'd stolen his laptop by accessing it through a built-in program. Jose Caceres signed on remotely and monitored usage (the thief mostly surfed the 'net for porn). After some time, Caceres noticed the man typing his name and address into an online registry. A few hours later, cops had caught the guy and Caceres had his computer back.

Considering that getting your laptop stolen is one of the worst things that can happen with all your personal files, music and computing power gone in one fell swoop, we asked computer expert Michael Santo, a tech blogger for Tech-Ex, to walk us through some of the processes that can be used to catch a computer thief, much like those used by Mr. Caceres.

For MacBooks, says Santo, you can use the built-in OSX program called "Back to My Mac," which allows you to take pictures remotely. This is your best bet, and it's pretty easy to set up. Careras used the "Screen Sharing" feature, also included in OSX, but this is a little less stealthy: "There is a message on the remote laptop, so the thief had to be blind to not see it, or at least, not around when it came up ... and noticed it too late," says Santo.

Click here for why this type of sleuthing is harder on a PC, and other tips for keeping your computer secure.

Santo notes that if you're using a PC, Windows XP and Windows Vista also have remote programs built in. But when these are used, there will be a login screen that pops up on the remote screen, so your thief will know immediately that you're onto him. Click here for the tutorial.

Here are some more of Santo's tips for laptop users:

-- Make sure your laptop has an account that requires a password. Many users disable this option.

-- Want more security? Go into your BIOS and enable a password there. The thief can't even get into the OS.

-- Of course, they could always pull the hard drive. What then? Use encryption on the hard drive. TrueCrypt is open source, and free. It's also highly regarded. It's supported by Mac OS, XP / Vista, Linux. You don't have to encrypt the whole drive, either.

-- You can encrypt folders from within XP and Vista, as well.