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Laptops on a Plane

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The world is a dan­ger­ous place, with a whole bunch of eejits. Sadly, the impact of no laptops on planes will have a ser­i­ous impact on busi­ness travel. It shouldn’t, but it will.

Many senior exec­ut­ives use this “down time” to catch up on emails and sort out their presentations/spreadsheets/reports. For many, this time is the only time execs have to be off­line. In the office, or at their des­tin­a­tion the time is spent with staff, meet­ings and cus­tom­ers. Not hunched over a QWERTY keyboard.

I think the impact on tech­no­logy may be different.

Ima­gine Busi­ness Class with a per­sonal in-seat laptop, with web browser and live inter­net con­nec­tion. As their the busi­ness trav­el­ler has their nor­mal laptop securely locked up in bag­gage, hope­fully on the same plane going to the same des­tin­a­tion, this in-seat laptop is their only means of working.

Web access to email has been around for some time. Desktop applic­a­tions on the web is emer­ging. Using such tools as forth­com­ing in Win­dows Live and Zoho may just find another niche. The chal­lenge for these vendors and IT is to securely con­nect applic­a­tions to sens­it­ive data.

Now we just need some for­ward think­ing car­ri­ers to imple­ment both high-speed inter­net and the browser hardware.

Stuff to read:

CNet Ajax Spurs Web rebirth for desktop apps

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Written by Nick Hodge

August 11th, 2006 at 5:04 pm