I did notice that I would leave my old NEC slates in stacks of papers on my desk, for both the good and the bad things that connotes.

I wonder how many iPod nano's (and iPhones, for that matter) have been dumped in the trash?!?

I guess the good news is that a MacBook Air can be had for free if one is just willing to do a little dumpster diving!

I think its much more likely that the "Air" has been pilfered than it truly ending up in the garbage.

I think its much more likely that the "Air" has been pilfered than it truly ending up in the garbage.

In the early days of tablets I had one with me in Tel Aviv and the person I was with wanted to take a shortcut through a building that happened to be the main court house. They had security, but it was typical Israeli person-based security rather than object-based security. Instead of taking my computer away to examine it themselves they asked me to wake up the computer, insisted on trying the handwriting recognition, and talked about the use case for tablets.

Why didn't the TSA officials just ask the customer to turn on the MacBook Air?

I've never had any problems getting my LS800 (of blessed memory) through airport security, but I didn't get the solid state drive upgrade so it does have a conventional hard drive (and two USB ports).

Hmmmm... I see how this can happen. I've had that same sinking feeling with regards to my Tungsten E and Nokia 6133 phone...only that the phone was stolen, while the Tungsten E was relegated to the background in favor of the newest gadget at the time.