NORTH CAROLINA COMPUTERS TARGETED heraldsun.com: printer-friendly story:

Laptop computers increasingly popular with thieves

BY BETH VELLIQUETTE, The Herald-Sun
March 13, 2007 10:40 pm

CHAPEL HILL -- First he had to explain what a dissertation was, and then Chapel Hill Police Investigator Jabe Hunter had to appeal to a young man who had just been arrested to help him find it.

The dissertation was on a laptop computer stolen on March 5 in a house break-in in northern Chapel Hill. After being gone for a few hours, the laptop's owner returned home about 12:45 p.m. to find that someone had broken into her home and stolen two laptops, a television, a stereo receiver and a DVD player.

Hunter got the case and learned from the owner that one of the laptops -- an Apple with special fonts -- contained her Ph.D. dissertation about Egyptian archaeology.

'She was preparing to defend it,' Hunter said. 'She's been working on it for 10 years.'

The doctoral candidate wasn't alone in having her laptop stolen, as it seems the handy folding computers have become very popular items for thieves.

Since Jan. 1, the Chapel Hill Police Department has received reports of the theft of 45 laptops. Some were reportedly stolen in residential or business break-ins, others were taken during armed robberies or when their owners left them unattended.