At least then you can claim someone tampered with it. What if they steal your laptop from your baggage. Can you still claim you had it in there? Unless they open it right before the cameras (and they'll know where those are), you won't be able to do that.
Sure you can. I know a few people who lost their luggage - in those situation they just claimed the maximum value the airline would pay, so they suddenly had 5 laptops and jewelry in their luggage. I'm not saying that's a morally right thing to do(it isn't) but the airline will just take your word for it.
I don't know how that worked out for those people but the time that happened to me, the airline most definitely did NOT take your word for it. Their policy, which was standard on most U.S. carriers when I checked at the time, was to reimburse per-pound at a rate set for used clothing. If you wanted any more than that, you had to show purchases receipts to justify the price, which was aggressively appreciated, and they outright excluded anything with a plug so those 5 laptops wouldn't even be paid at the old t-shirt rate.
