If you are serious about security and want a magnesium-block notebook thieves cant even boot, much less hack into without an encrypted key, one California-based manufacturer has a device you should see.
Getac Inc., Lake Forest, recently added pre-boot password protection to its MobileForce M220 laptop, a product introduced in January. The protection keeps unauthorized users from launching the operating system. The hard drive would seem to be unformatted if it were stolen and installed in another machine.