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Why not just close the lid & put it to sleep? You really shut down every time you move somewhere with your laptop?

That's really bad from a security perspective. It's possible to retrieve all sorts of data from a machine that has been 'slept', especially things like the decryption key for the HDD. Various ports on the outside of the laptop, like USB, have DMA for performance reasons.

Wouldn't all these issues be present anyways if the thief simply turned on the machine?

No. If I shut down my laptop, my hard drive is encrypted and keys are no longer in RAM (modulo a cold-boot attack, but that is only really useful for <30 minutes after shutdown without preparation).

You must have great reasons to be so paranoid. I am slightly jealous.

I mean the chances of putting the laptop to sleep and having your laptop stolen by someone with enough knowledge to obtain access to the keys in RAM to decrypt the hard drive - well, that would be an amazing story! Not to mention the fact that you have data that would be worth all of that trouble!

Boot Bios password. You ever heard of this ?

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