The other catch: LockItTight Free limits you to one device and will report its location only every two hours. If you want more devices and more frequent reporting, you'll need a paid account. LockItTight Standard, for example, costs $1.99 per month per device, and reports location every 12 minutes. It also boosts the screenshot and Webcam capture resolutions.

There are lots of other laptop-recovery services out there, so I recommend doing some research before deciding which one to entrust with your laptop's safety. That said, I definitely recommend choosing one of them--because there's nothing worse than sitting there wishing your stolen machine had a way to "phone home." With a remote-monitoring system like this, it can.

Here's a hassle that drives me nuts: Whenever I want to uninstall a program, I have to venture into Windows' Control Panel, find the uninstall tool, wait for it to show a complete list of my installed programs, scroll through the list to find the program I want to remove, and then start the process. That's about four steps too many, in my humble opinion.

LeizerSoft's adds a feature that should have been built into Windows five versions ago: an Uninstall option that appears in the context menu when you right-click the icon for any installed program. Doesn't matter if the icon is on your desktop or in the Start Menu--just right-click and choose Uninstall. That should start the program's associated uninstaller.