pizzamiles

This is probably old news, but I was in my local CompUSA store today to pick up a monitor I ordered. As usual, the stupid clerks and the MOD could not find my order in their in-store computersystem. Yet somehow they were able to find the order via their website.... oh well...

I walked around the store while they tried to find my order. In the laptop aisle, I saw a $2400 Acer laptop with a 20-inch LCD screen... the screen itself was almost 3/4-inch thick. On the lower corner of the laptop, there was a little sticker that said "perfect for air travel, etc, etc.... adapter for airline use optional...." If I were I cartoon character, my jaw would have hit the floor in an instant...

Oh well... 40 minutes later they found my order and I was on my way... should have gone to Circuit City instead...

number_6

I saw one of those, in international J (so 60 inch seat pitch). Worked fine until the battery died, and the owner discovered the inflight power port only delivers 75watts which isn't enough to charge his battery or keep it running (so the battery slowly runs down, even when running from aircraft power). Very impractical for normal ailrline use, and I doubt it would be possible to open the screen in a domestic US F seat, much less in Y. You could only use it in a bulkhead row.

NM

And even then you would likely need wide-angle lenses in your glasses to be able to make use of it!

I have a 15.4" widescreen Dell D820 and that is too big for any practical use in coach seats.

drtravel

I have a 15" Toshiba and a 17" HP and have made had to make use of both when in coach, although it was more effort than benefit overall. Batteries barely last an hour on either one. The Toshiba has a detachable wireless keyboard, so I prop the laptop up straight like an easel in the empty adjacent seat and keyboard from my lap or the armrest. Where there's a will, there's a way!

Efrem

I've used my 17" Apple PowerBook (my only computer) in coach more often than I'd like to be there in the first place. It's a bit over 15" wide, screen measurements are diagonal, so it fits. Not much room left over for other stuff, it helps if there's an empty seat next to you, but definitely possible. (It also helps if you're skinny.) FWIW, I get a lot more battery life than that.

As for a 20" screen, though - it's likely to be 18" wide or so, as wide as the seat, so even aside from height issues vis-a-vis the seat in front an empty seat on one side would be mandatory. I also don't see lugging all that weight around. A 17" screen, 1680 x 1050, lets me see two full pages side by side, or the equivalent in other apps. That's all I need. YMMV.

Loren Pechtel

I carry a laptop with a 19" screen but I've never tried to use it on the airplane. It's a desktop-replacement type machine, engineered for power, not frugality with it's battery. I've only used it on it's battery a few times--and it burns through it in about an hour. It doesn't even have any settings to reduce power consumption.

Wilbur

I had the 19" or 20" Acer with the AMD Duron or Turon (I pull off those stickers, so I can't remember exactly) chip in it for the past 18 months, and I used non-stop it on flights to, from and around four continents. However, this was F or C seating, and usually supplemented with an iGo power source to prevent die-off. The box itself had great format for typing/working the mouse, the speed was eye-popping, and the screen was easy to read for my aging eyes. I had only two complaints:

1 - When a real power app kicked in and the processor had to work hard steadily, it heated up something awesome and the fan went into overdrive, and
2 - TSA in the states appeared to think it was a basketball. Never have I had a computer dropped, slapped or taken out and examined so often. What are they thinking?

Anyway, the constant abuse finally got to it, and just this month I finally replaced it with a smaller model. It isn't the years, it is the miles, as they say. Sad to see it go.