Depends how smart the "average terrorist" would be. Because you would catch the ones stupid enough to just gut out the laptop, rendering it inoperative (unless of course for that last one blaze of glory… hem).
Presumably these terrorists would also be caught by the system that catches the slightly smarter terrorists that only gutted the battery, or swapped out the CD drive, or just shoved a bunch of explosives under the palm rest. I mean, those things would be picked up, right?
Asking people to turn on their computers is like a doctor taking your temperature with the back of his hand on your forehead.. right before actually using the digital thermometer anyway.
