(in-a-nutshell version at bottom, for you impatient types. Tongue)

the one time i've flown with my laptop, some stuff was a bit funky next time i fired her up. nothing huge, just odd stuff, like a few things on the desktop had somehow been renamed( Huh). Who's to say something worse won't happen next time. i know THEY say it's totally safe, but why risk it, right?

i read that if there's something in carry-on (such as my laptop) that i don't want going through the Super X-Ray Machine of Death, you can have it "hand checked."
what i want to know is: just what the heck does that mean? does it just mean they go over it with a hand wand, or are they gonna go at my baby with a screw-driver and allen wrenches looking for concealed mini-nukes?

Most of my stuff is backed up on an external HD(which stays at home), so my concern is a useless machine at my destination(ie. dead weight), rather than loss of data.
(though it is a pain to put everything back. do you have any idea how long it takes to transfer 130 GB of data? hint: now would be a good time to master the didgeridoo.)


bottom line: i don't want to risk my computer gettin fried in the x-ray machine. Is it worth it to request that it be hand-checked?