End of laptops on planes?

If you’re going to a conference and/or holiday and planning to bring your laptop, you’ll need to think twice about where to put it. You won’t be able to take it on as hand luggage for a while (see any UK news site as of this morning, e.g. BBC News – “Heathrow shut to incoming flights”)

Of course what you do depends on your own situation, but I personally would leave my laptop at home rather than entrust it to ‘checked-in luggage’ where you must assume either (a) moderately rough handling or (b) getting lost. I say ‘must’ because that’s the only safe assumption if you’ve got valuable stuff on it… you can wrap it very well, of course, (see my earlier Busted Tablet story for a sad image if you need any more warning) but now is a great time to think about storing all that crucial stuff elsewhere (or just emailing it to yourself on a Gmail account for instance), for easy access from your desination and/or on a USB keychain flash memory stick. Heck, I now keep all my key slide and demo info linked in my blog gutter on the right under Pages… Quick Demos just so that they’re always accessible from wherever I am.

Part of this stems from my presentation mantra: “No apologies” (during a presentation, that is). No apologies for text that is too hard to read, running over time, or for losing your presentation or even your gadgets. The audience does not care: you must not allow any of those to happen!

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