The Mile-High Club: More Fun With The Techno-Clueless

The latest, alas, in a series….

So I'm on my flight to Dallas Tuesday afternoon, and I head for the bathrooms in the back of the plane. As I pass a guy working on an unltralight laptop, similar in form factor to my old Lifebook P-2110, I hear him swear under his breath. I do my business in the lavatory and, as I head back up to my seat, the guy throws his hands up in the air and curses again, this time more audibly. I decide to ask him if there's anything I can do to help, identifying myself as "someone who knows a bit about computers."

"My battery's dead," he complains. "Why can't they make a computer that runs all day?" I point out to him that sub-notebooks, to keep size and weight down, also tend to have sub-batteries so, in spite of the sub-CPUs they also usually integrate to reduce power draw and heat dissipation, long system life (versus other laptops with beefier batteries) doesn't tend to be among their strong points.

"Anyway," I point out, gesturing to the EV-DO wireless data card sticking out of his laptop's PCMCIA slot, complete with vigorously blinking red 'searching for service' light, "your system would run much longer if you unplugged your cellular data card. It's not like it even works, this high up in the air and moving this fast." "Oh….yeah….right," he replies, looking a bit like a deer caught in the headlights.

"And by the way," I continue, "didn't you hear the flight attendant announcement to turn off cellular devices and keep them off during the flight?" "Well yeah," he replied, "but this isn't a cell phone." "Yes, but it runs on the same network as a cell phone, and it broadcasts the same signals as a cell phone," I reply. "But it's not a cell phone….I heard her say to turn off cell phones," he counters. "But…." I start to say, at which point he interrupts with a brusque "If she doesn't say I have to turn this thing off, I don't have to turn it off."

Now it's my turn to throw my hands up in the air, swear (in my head), and return to my seat. Thank goodness his laptop battery's dead, and that he doesn't have a spare. And, for the sake of the thousands of folks like me who are currently on board other airplanes containing other techno-clueless folks toting laptops with 'searching for service' cellular data cards, I hope the FAA concerns about passenger electronics operation on airplanes are overblown.

Sigh. Happy Friday, all.

Followup: At least I didn't sit next to this guy on the plane. Scott Adams' (Dilbert) blog is frequently hilarious, and highly recommended!