Netbook: The Way To Travel
November 14th, 2009, 10:15am by Mike[Earlier this week…]
Writing this from the airplane, where from my seat, I can see two other laptop users: one is on the aisle and has their laptop angled into the aisle to try to get enough room to type, and the other literally has their laptop tilted away from them in order to have the screen open enough to type on.
OK, these people aren’t the savviest airplane laptop users — you have to know that they call them “laptops” for a reason, and any normal-sized machine simply can’t be used on the tray table.
But mine isn’t a normally-sized machine, it’s my netbook running OS X. Becasue it’s so small, it fits fine on the tray table, even with the guy in front of me leaned back in his seat. The netbook is fully open, and I can type fine.
I’ve decided that this is the way to travel with a computer.
The other place you win with a netbook is in carry-on baggage. By having a small machine, you can have a small bag. My netbook fits great into an extra-small size Timbuk2 Laptop Grip Sleeve, with room enough for the machine, a notebook, and my iPod headphones inside, and my iPhone in the outside pocket. There’s still plenty of room inside for the 6-cell battery I have on order, which will bring me into the neighborhood of 10 hours of battery life between the two batteries. All this weighs much less than my 15″ laptop alone. Some people on this flight are carrying hardcover books that are bigger.
One of these days I’ll fly on a plane that has internet access, so I could actually post this from the plane, too.