A burglar once took off with two laptops from my employer. These were later found again, with the hard-disks nicely formatted running a Dutch version of Windows XP. (We only use English Windows versions, so we know it was reformatted and not hacked.) The thief got caught when he'd crashed his car while driving the stolen goods to someone who'd ordered them, apparently.
When your laptop is stolen, there's a big chance the thief will just ignore the data on it. The machine has value, the data often not. So encryption and/or passwords? Not such a big deal in this scenario.
But you would be in trouble if someone targets your lattop for data theft. It does need to have some valuable data on it to take the risks, though. Sourcecode of a new product. Creditcard information of visitors from a webshop. Possibly some other data that might interest them. Or maybe just your picture collection from your visit to the nude beach, last summer. If you have some data to protect, you better make sure the data itself is secure. (Thus, encrypt this data!)
However, do keep in mind that if you encrypt your data, then anyone can still access this data if they know your password. Encrypted or not doesn't make a difference in that case. Password strength does, though. Protection is as strong as it's weakest link. So, having a strong password is always best, even if you don't use encryption. (Because it requires someone to take more extreme actions to access your data instead of just logging in.)
Do you log in as admin every time you start up your laptop? – John Fouhy – 2009-08-21T03:19:05.363
Should be community wiki. – None – 2009-08-21T06:51:36.370