The trouble with wi-fi

"Apparently, there’s now a small-time crime ring stealing tips from cafe workers and absconding with laptops in cafes".

Okay, granted, this is out on the west coast, and hence is way way way away from us Cleveland folk--a strange nether-world hidden from our gaze by approximately one billion miles of farmland, mountains, and Chicago. But you got to wonder--is this the sort of thing we should be worried about? We're seeing the laptop explosion just as much as anywhere else, I reckon. I know I've experienced it plenty myself: as the coffee shops I've spent so much time at over the last five-odd years have gone wireless, I've gone from being "that laptop guy" (you mean, you can use computers without the Internet attached?) to being "that doofy-looking guy who's all p.o.'ed because all the tables near the outlets are occupied".

Not that I'm trying to incite panic or anything. I don't want to see my hangouts going into lock-down mode or anything. But then, nobody wants to be that guy who packs up everything just to go to use the restroom or to go buy another cup. Seriously: don't be that guy. But then, if someone came in and ripped my computer out of my hands, I think I'd break down in tears, data backed up to thumb drives or not. God knows I try to write at home--making your own coffee is a lot cheaper in the long run--but it just doesn't work that often.

Is it enough to raise of small bit of awareness, to remind people that stuff like this does happen? Are those laptop lock devices I've seen in catalogues here and there maybe worth a second look, and not actually the sign of a totally paranoid soul? Is it just a risk you have to take (like, as mentioned in the link, carjacking)? Do members-only writers colonies suggest a viable side-benefit sort of solution? (Sidenote: that's an idea I have mixed feelings about--namely, with the whole inclusion of wi-fi thing. Writing and blogging are, I suspect, two different activies in that regard. Blogging, yeah, you kind of need the internet. Blogging, from the latin bloggicus, blo="make noise", "gicus"="in cyberspace". With writing--and yes, I'm displaying my prejudice toward "writing = fiction" here, I admit, and I apologize--taking the internet with you is just a way of taking all those distractions with you that you were supposed to be leaving behind when you left the house to go do your writing. Yeah, I dunno.) Or do we just brush it all off as some freaky-deaky coastal thing--crime doesn't happen in our humble little city!

I'm raising the issue lightly here, because I don't want to seem like I'm yelling fire in a crowded theater. Just honest questions. Maybe someone else can tell me if there is an issue here, and whether it's one to be taken seriously (before it takes us seriously?).