Working on a Plane

Many of us have used a laptop or notebook on an airplane. Back in the “old days,” I could use my airplane power adapter to keep my notebook charged during my long flights. Now, most airplanes have disabled the in-chair power ports in the coach section of the aircraft. So, I usually travel with two extended batteries for my Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Tablet PC and that easily gives me roughly 15 hours of work time. I obviously don’t need both batteries, but I travel with both since you just never know how long you might be stuck at the airport.

I love traveling with my tablet PC because I can fold the screen back and switch to pen-based computing when the turbulence gets rough (or if the person in front of me reclines and crushes my workspace). On my flight to Chicago, I was able to work for several hours on the plane and I got so much done. It’s amazing how productive you can be when you’re uninterrupted.

I’m waiting for day when Wi-Fi is universally available on all flights. I don’t think that day is too far away.