truecryptNow you can use…

http://www.truecrypt.org/

to completely envelope your laptop’s hard drive in a proective shell. Check it out. You can encrypt a folder, or force encryption of an entire hard drive, pre-boot. What’s more, after that, ancryption is “real-time.” You can even hide keep a hidden volume within the encrypted portion, thus tricking an adversary into believing you’ve given up the hard drive, when in reality, you’ll retain private information on the hard drive in a secure sub-partition.