Erik,

I've flown with a variety of laptops, starting with an Epson HX-20 in 1983, with nary a problem. In the old days you had to actually open it up and turn it on. I just flew last week with my Asus netbook and it sailed thru in its case (with just the PC in it). Don't think hand checking is of much benefit for the time it takes.

BTW, that Epson had a built in printer, similar to the old style dot matrix cash register printers. I did get some anxious looks from my fellow passengers when I started printing out a document.