Great little trick, unfortunately most laptops are formatted right after being stolen to be re-sold. Unless your laptop was stolen with the express purpose of blackmailing you or because it is known to have juicy data on it the chances of it coming alive long enough for you to connect back to it are slim to none.
Even so every little bit helps, if this aids in the recovery of a few laptops and apprehension of the perps then so much the better.
If your laptop does get stolen keep a close eye on auction sites, ebay, craigs list and the like, chances are it will turn up there within hours of being stolen.
I have a particularly ingenious defense to prevent reformatting: I have a 3,1 Macbook Pro with a Superdrive. Not only is it incapable of reading any optical media, but getting your disc back from the furry recesses of its lair is almost impossible.
Ha! I understand entirely. I have the same hardware, and I'm replacing the (now broken) optical drive with an MCE OptiBay and an SSD currently in the mail.
I did the same. Watch out for 1.7 fw upgrade for the sata bus. My mbp couldn't handle the amount of data sent and as a result would crash every time I would install os x. Downgrading the firmware to only allow for 1.5Mbps worked well and it is what I am currently running. Email me if you need a link to the downgrade.
Even so every little bit helps, if this aids in the recovery of a few laptops and apprehension of the perps then so much the better.
If your laptop does get stolen keep a close eye on auction sites, ebay, craigs list and the like, chances are it will turn up there within hours of being stolen.