Things like this, along with laptop theft, are excellent reasons to encrypt your home folder. This is pretty easy with built-in software on both Windows 7 & Mac OS X (and I’m sure common Linux distros).
One caveat is that encrypted home folders tend to take maybe 1.2× the space of an unencrypted home folder, so delete some videos & music if you’re on an SSD or otherwise constrained HDD.
One caveat is that encrypted home folders tend to take maybe 1.2× the space of an unencrypted home folder, so delete some videos & music if you’re on an SSD or otherwise constrained HDD.