[viae]

If the attack vector is petty theft the following would be more than sufficient:

* Encrypt the user data portion of the hd.

* Password protect the bios, hard drive (if it has that capability in the bios.), and the OS accounts.

* Keep account passwords and account information in an additional password protected store (such as 1password).

* Don't save sensitive data in web browsers or other autocomplete programs.

Encrypting the whole hard drive, in my experience, is a huge pain in the ass; particularly for disaster recovery. For non-IT department systems it's not worth it.