Tracking a stolen laptop

Solution
You can't. You could in theory with a MAC address. This would only work locally though.
Say at a school, a MAC address could be tracked down within the network.

In the WAN, you're out of luck as the IP address takes over and is not unique to any specific device.
You can't. You could in theory with a MAC address. This would only work locally though.
Say at a school, a MAC address could be tracked down within the network.

In the WAN, you're out of luck as the IP address takes over and is not unique to any specific device.
 
Solution
After the theft, pretty impossible unless prepared for beforehand.
Microsoft/google kind of allow "track my laptop" thing, if set to be tracked beforehand, that only tells general idea and ONLY if it is connected to internet.
And that only works if the people who stole it, don't do the "wise" option of factory resetting it, in which case said options go out of window.
Same applies to services offered by some antivirus softwares.

The tracking needs internet access for laptop and the software to tell it to do it, doing it with serial number only is not going to happen.