I worked in a school district for a few years where we had two break-ins that included thefts of Mac laptops. So I decided to create something that would help track laptops in the event they were stolen. This is of course free, one of its major advantages. It is also hosted by yourself, so it is easy to control. This has run on about 1,500 computers without causing any type of overload on machines or the network, and it does exactly what it is suppose to do. I now use it on all home and family computers because I trust it so well. I have used it for about a half a year and it works on Tiger and Leopard.

Note that this is software, so if the thief erases the hard drive on the computer, this will remove the phoning home capabilities. This does take some tinkering around, so it's fairly advanced. But the end result is very rewarding. This hint is broken up into the following sections -- be sure not to skip anything: