No laptop

I've been wondering if it is possible to survive a week without my laptop, so I am going to the conference without it, which is a big change for me. Instead, I will only be taking an iPad and a bluetooth keyboard. We'll see how well I get by without having a regular computer at my fingertips.

I'm looking forward to the fact that the iPad is so much lighter than my laptop. I have lots of not-so-fond memories from past conferences of how heavy my bag would feel by the end of a long conference day.

I'm also looking forward to the longer battery life, which should greatly reduce how often I need to plug in to charge. Many a time at other conferences, I have tried to arrive early to a session so that I could score a seat near an electrical outlet, in order to keep my laptop battery from going dead.

I'll have my trusty iPhone of course as a backup and I'm planning to take an Airport Express along too. Supposedly, the hotel has wired network ports in the rooms, but no wireless. I'm not holding my breath on the in-room network. I've had too many issues with them in the past.