I have travelled more than once with just my iPad. I spent 3 weeks working on a ship and my laptop came out of the bag once for about 20 minutes. Everything else was done on my iPad. I routinely use my iPad around the house and leave all the computers back in the office.

As a data point, the things that drive me from the iPad to the laptop are: whitefonted discussion here, webomics with alt-text, and flash dependent web sites. The only videos I watch are from iTunes, DirecTV, EyeTV, or YouTube, but they look great.

The 11" air is awesome. I want one like whoa and steal ND's constantly.

OK, guys...I have 2 USB ports on my emachine laptop, and I think they are fouled up. One's too loose, and the other one is too...whatever...when I try to plus something in, it won't "catch." I think I broke them. Bad me.

This sucks hard, because I cannot sync my touch.

Can I take my laptop in somewhere and have them looked at and possibly replaced? Anyone know about how much that would cost, or how hard it is?

Erin, I dunno. But I'll just throw some thoughts out there....

I'm guessing the USB ports are soldered directly to the motherboard. Assuming that's the case:

• Some places might tell you the whole motherboard would need to be replaced. That would probably cost too much to be worth it.

• Maybe the USB ports could be repaired or removed and new ones soldered on. The difficulty of this would depend on how close together everything is on the motherboard. Know anyone who's good at soldering?

So, maybe you'd want to avoid repair places such as Best Buy, and find a small repair shop that's run by a skilled electronics guy?

But it wouldn't hurt to take it to some repair places (or call around) and get estimates.

I did a brief google - this has some suggestions to try first before having major surgery done: [link]

Erin, I just talked to my boss. He thinks it might be very difficult to replace the USB ports, as modern motherboards are assembled by machine and have everything close together (especially on a laptop) and they're not really meant to be repaired by hand. But he can't say for sure without looking at the motherboard.

AH, buggery fuck! Well, I'll take it in to Microcenter or have one of my geeky friends look at it. Maybe there's an easy fox for one of the ports that I just don't know how to do.

All I need is one...

Thanks, guys.

I had the power supply fixed on this computer -- I don't know how different it is to have a usb resodered

erin, do you have a card slot?

[link]

It doesn't appear to be so, Daniel.