Stop the presses – but not the clocks

We interrupt this week’s regularly scheduled column for your comments.

Seems quite a few of you were ticked-off at last week’s story suggesting that airlines had turned their clocks ahead in order to rush passengers to the gate and achieve an on-time departure.

“Weak, weak, weak!” fumed reader Dave Lutz. “I guess it just shows that ground crews aren’t the only ones that race a clock and sometimes produce less than their best work.”

Dave is far from alone in his opinion, and at the end of this story I’ll include more of your e-mails and then try to settle the timepiece controversy once and for all. But first I wanted to share some truly useful information for travelers who want to stay connected.

When I wasn’t ducking the fallout from last week’s column, I managed to take a look at a few new products that landed in my mailbox. Here are the ones I liked:

THE ROADWARRIOR CONNECTCORD NET ($24.95 from LaptopTravel.com) is an 8-foot retractable Ethernet cable that works far and away better than any comparable RJ-11 cord I’ve ever taken on the road with me. My favorite feature is the tiny switch that locks the wire in place so that when you unplug the jack, it doesn’t snap back into its reel. A year ago I wouldn’t have recommended this to anyone but the most hard-core power user. However, with RJ-45 outlets becoming almost as common as mints on a hotel pillow, I wouldn’t advise anyone to travel without one.

COPERNIC 2000 PRO AND COPERNIC SUMMARIZER ($79.95 each from Copernic.com) is the mother of all Internet search programs. I could spend paragraphs talking about Pro’s many features that fit into its miniscule file size, like its access to 600 search engines, its ability to weed out dead links, or its ability to work with your existing browser, but that would miss the point. Pro will save you time and lead you to the Web site you’re looking for – and fast. Summarizer, the newer of the two programs, isn’t a Web-based program per-se; instead, it distills long documents into short summaries. I like using Summarizer when I get novel-length e-mails complaining about my columns. I’ll give you a demonstration in a minute.

THE SUPER MINI OPTICAL MOUSE ($49.99 from igo.com) solves one of the most enduring problems of the portable user: what to do with that touchpad/roller/button that keeps sticking. You really wish you had a mouse, but what’s the point of dragging the full-size peripheral with you when you travel? At only 2 1/2 inches long and 1 inch wide, this mouse addresses that problem, plus a few others I hadn’t thought of. For example, no more worries about the moving parts inside clinging to the surface of the track pad – this optical mouse records 1,500 motions per second and claims to be “maintenance free.” I suppose we’ll see about that. (If you’re interested in saving money, I noticed the mouse was a little cheaper on Laptoptravel.com.)

The Falcon Dust-Off Mobile Computer Cleaning Kit (prices vary; available at Office Depot and Best Buy, among others) is a wonderful package of cleaning utensils that removes the dust and dirt that accumulate from your mobile computing devices. If you don’t buy this particular one, then get something like it. I rescued one PC from a cat hair infestation (nearly used the entire canister of spray in the process) and the microfiber cleaning cloth has a permanent place next to my desk, because when other people touch my monitor I have to obsessively clean it after they’ve left. Guess everyone’s got a quirk.

Now, let’s get to those comments I promised earlier…

“I have flown quite a bit, including overseas and on different airlines. I have never run into the advanced clocks scenario,” grumbled Willis Hanson, a Sioux City, Iowa, retiree who thought my story was paranoid. “Furthermore, it would be counterproductive as incoming passengers running for a tight connection were told the local time on arrival. Airlines would just create more frustration on the part of travelers – no point in doing that.”

Hanson’s e-mail continues for a few paragraphs. Here’s what I like to do with notes like that – I summarize them with my new Copernic software. I click on the letter, choose “summarize” and the key words pop out:

- advancing
- airlines
- tight connection
- advanced clocks
- scenario
- overseas

There, wasn’t that better?

“I like reading your reports, but this one was journalistically in the cellar,” scoffs Alan Glazen, a reader based in Cleveland. “I mean all you had to do was go to a single airport…”

Sorry to cut you off, there, Alan, but I’m having so much fun with Summarizer that I thought I’d give it another try. Hope you don’t mind.

- single
- airport
- cellar
- reports
- reading
- Cleveland

You know, somehow hate mail just reads better like this.

Perhaps the biggest insult came from Lutz of “weak, weak, weak” fame. He accused me of trying to be both an investigative reporter and Dave Barry. Ouch! My former editor at ABCNews.com will be delighted that someone thinks I sound like the Miami Herald columnist. For three long years, while I wrote The Crabby Traveler, she constantly demanded that I “try to write more like Dave Barry.”

I didn’t know which was worse, being asked to write like Barry or like the late Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko (my former employers at CNN.com did that). Nothing against either of those fine scribes, but if you want Barry, why not hire him?

Bringing a columnist back from the dead is another matter entirely, and if anyone’s going to do it, it’s not CNN.com, which last week killed nearly a third of its dot com jobs – including, presumably, some of the folks I worked for. To them, I extend my heartfelt sympathies and an offer to share my copy of Summarizer.

Of course, there were some of you who thought yours truly was right on. “Great article,” raved Robert Bruss, a San Francisco reader. “The clock in the Northwest Airlines Worldperks Club is always four minutes ahead. I used to panic when I saw it, but now I know it’s intentionally set ahead.”

In summary:

- airlines
- do tinker
- with their timepieces
- if you don’t believe me
- get your own column

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

Be the first to comment