TINY TERRORS

Dick Pountain/16 August 2006/13:12/Idealog 145

It feels like an awfully long time since I mentioned my own computer system in this column, and that's for the best of possible reasons - there's been absolutely nothing to say because it's been 'just working', which is the test of a successful installation nowadays. I run a single computer, an IBM Thinkpad T40, which gets backed up onto a LaCie external USB drive via scheduled differential backups every 15 minutes and a full backup every night at 2.00am. The LaCie is the size of a fag packet, powers off the USB port and easily fits into pocket or carrying bag. This computer gets hauled back and forth between my homes in London and Italy several times a year, and its singularity means that I don't need to worry about trying to keep two machines in synch or about my email database being spread over two locations. Its small size and weight are a great boon when lugging it from one place to another, and both screen and keyboard are excellent which is what one pays IBM prices for. Incidentally, I very much second Paul Ockenden's advice of a couple of columns back when he recommended avoiding dedicated laptop bags that scream "come and steal me!" - I use a narrow brown leather shoulder bag that takes the Thinkpad on end, and looks utterly anonymous.

Windows XP Pro has performed in exemplary fashion and I've had not a single hiccup of any sort in two years (surreptitiously touches wood). So why am I writing about it now then? Has something gone wrong? Well yes it has, not with my computer, but with the world that surrounds it. As I write this London's airports are still in chaos following the August bomb plot scare and people keep popping up on TV to say that the regulations about cabin baggage will never again be as relaxed as they were before. For several days no cabin baggage at all was permitted, just your keys and passport in a clear plastic bag. Something like 10,000 pieces of hold baggage went missing during the days of this emergency; I've just watched a fuming gentleman telling BBC News 24 how BA had just lost £1000 worth of his electronic gear including mobile phone; insurance companies are saying laptops in the hold are not covered. In the middle of all this - as if to put the cherry on top - Dell announced it was recalling 4.1 million lithium-ion laptop batteries that have a habit of spontaneously combusting. Assuming that the airlines do allow us to carry laptops into plane cabins again, they may insist we demonstrate them working: a bit embarassing if you turn it on and it bursts into flames...

I've only ever once allowed my laptop to be placed in hold baggage and that was on 12th September 2001, the day after the attacks on the Twin Towers. We'd booked weeks earlier to return to Italy that day, and I rang up the previous evening assuming that the flight would be cancelled as no planes were being allowed in or out of the UK. However Rynanair told me that they would fly the next morning, but to arrive three hours early. This we did, at 5.00am, and it took several hours to pass through security, in the course of which we were stripped of all hand baggage except passport and wallet. I didn't even have a chance to pack my laptop inside the main suitcase, just to toss its carry bag onto the conveyor. As a result I spent the whole flight worrying not about the colossal challenge to Western Civilisation that the previous day's events presented, but the colossal challenge to my business presented by that laptop rolling around in the hold. When it finally appeared on the carousel at Pisa in one piece, I vowed never to let that happen again.

This set me thinking about just how much depends on that laptop working. When I arrive in Italy, first thing I do is unpack it, set it up, plug in the phone line and connect to email. Without that daily connection to PC Pro magazine I couldn't do my job of editing the Real World section, and splitting my life between London and Italy wouldn't be possible. All the books I've written, huge amounts of reference material, dictionaries, encyclopedias, programming environments, my music and photographs live in there too - it's my office, library, studio and study rolled into one. Perhaps I'll have to go back to keeping two machines, one in the UK and one in Italy, and just carry the LaCie drive back and forth, which means trying to keep them synchronised (and Microsoft has devoted 20 years of Windows development to making that all but impossible).

Here's a thought appropos the War on Terrorism: the 1940 Blitz was terrorism its vilest, but I'm told we defeated that by defiantly carrying on with life as normal. The purpose of terrorism is not pure sadism or 'evil' - it is to break an opponent's will by so disrupting their everyday life that they submit to the terrorists' demands. It often feels as though governments and airlines occasionally lose sight of this fact and treat us, along with the terrorists, as the enemy.