encrypted file systems

Hi, I use my laptop at work and tend to carry a few proprietary documents to keep them handy. I'm interested in encrypting the documents so that they can't be recovered should the laptop be stolen. Since there's a number of files and directories involved I'd like to use something that will encrypt a whole file structure - something like an encrypted tar file. It'd also be nice if it were possible to examine the contents with a GUI and extract a few files at a time. Is there anything like that available? I'd like to use an encrypted filesystem, but it appears to need to be installed manually outside of the installation of Suse. I'll probably do that the next time I install Suse on the laptop. Thanks, Steve