Here’s video surveillance footage of an actual laptop theft. This theft happens to include just about every attribute we talk about regularly here at MyLaptopGPS.

First, watch the footage:

What we notice here is important.

1. At 16:09:39 the thief enters the restaurant.
2. He waits 25 minutes. According to the restaurant owner, he even ordered some food.
3. At 16:34:20 he prepares his strike.
4. Five seconds later, at 16:34:25, he strikes.
5. In 11 seconds, he has made the hit, packed the laptop, assembled his gear and heads for the door. 11 seconds.
6. He’s to the front door in six seconds (16:34:42) and gone.

This seems eerily consistent with the famous Twenty Second Window that we’ve been hailing for years. Thieves strike in about 20 seconds. In this case, actually, the entire strike-and-pack was 16 seconds. This thief gets extra credit for shaving four seconds off the clock.

Furthermore, the laptop itself was in a conspicuous laptop bag, making it a prime target. Additionally, it was left unattended for a short period of time.

From the video, it is not clear whether the laptop was marked visibly. It is also not clear what other laptops were available. If you’ll grant me some breathing room, I’ll go out on a limb and say the laptop wasn’t marked and at least one other target was available–at least one other laptop on the premises could have been stolen instead.

1. Twenty Second Window
2. Unmarked property
3. Conspicuous laptop bag
4. Laptop left unattended, even briefly

This is a textbook laptop theft. MyLaptopGPS has a 99.6% success rate stopping this very event. It happens every 12 seconds, after all. We now have to wonder what data was stored on that laptop.