Flying with a bunch of gadgets is terrible – yours truly has had loads and loads of eekers (and a few nice chats with gadget heads working the XRay station) when traveling to events.
One special nuisance is the obligation to remove your laptop or netbook from your rucksack -> this requires an annoying pack and unpack process, and furthermore increases risks of theft. The TSA now stated the following:
E-readers, Net Books and other small gadgets are becoming more and more popular for travelers to bring along in their carry-ons.
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Electronic items smaller than the standard sized laptop should not need to be removed from your bag or their cases. It’s that simple.
It’s important to remember, however, that our officers are trained to look for anomalies to help keep air travel safe, and if something needs a closer look, it will receive secondary screening. The key to avoiding bag searches is keeping the clutter down. The less clutter you have in your bag, the less likely it will be searched.
Only electronics the size of a standard laptop or larger (for example Playstation®, Xbox™, or Nintendo®), full-size DVD players, and video cameras that use video cassettes must be removed from their carrying cases and submitted separately for x-ray screening.
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For now, this is relevant to US airports only – the airports of the European Union are theoretically independent. However, rest assured that they will follow suite soon, which should speed the security process up by a fair bit…
P.S. Unless you have an extremely high frequent flyer status (HON, multiple million miler), arguing with security is pointless. If they want you to unpack your netbook or iPad, do it…
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