MacBook On The Plane
While I do not travel as often as some people, I do occasionally have to get on a plane and visit my employer to see people in meatspace. Lately when I’ve been traveling, I haven’t been pulling out my laptop on the plane for the simple reason that trying to use my laptop on the plane is challenging. The big problem is that it’s too big for the space I have in your typical airline seat.
That being said, I can also do most of what I want to do on a plane–blogging and listening to music–from my Nokia mobile phone. Over the past year or so I’ve been using either a Nokia 9500, Nokia 9300, or a Nokia E70 on the plane. They all have an “offline” mode so I can use their non-phone functions while on the plane. I can write up an MMS on one of these phones and when I come back online, the MMS will get posted to my blog fairly quickly. They have media players so I can listen to my podcass.
Enter the MacBook. The laptop is slightly wider than the IBM Thinkpad T41 I carry for work. However, the screen is a good inch or more shorter than my IBM T41, which allows me to use the laptop more comfortably in a coach seat. The screen goes farther back because the top edge of the laptop hits lower on the seatback of the person in front of me. This means my screen is more upright and the keyboard is farther back, making for a more comfortable laptop using experience.
I can blog on the MacBook as well by using the Performancing Plugin for Firefox. While I am offline on a plane–they don’t give Internet access on the short-hop flights I normally take–Performancing allows me to write up a blog post, save it for later, then come back to it and post it when I get connected again. It’s not quite as “immediate” as doing it on a Nokia phone with an MMS, but at least it’s more comfortable to type them up.
Technorati Tags: macbook, nokia, blogging, thinkpad
