Well, laptops are used out and about, so more likely to be stolen. It always hits the news here in the UK when a government type organisation loses a memory stick or laptop, because they never take the simple step of encrypting the device.

There are many software applications available that work well to do this, but I like TrueCrypt. Please make a donation if you try this and like it.

I???m not sure I agree with blanking the hard disk (point 5 above). Yes you get a bit of bloat ware from most manufactures Windows preloads, but it doesn???t take that long to remove what you don???t need.