Have You Traveled With Your iPad Yet?

As a companion computer around the home, the iPad clearly shines. It's light enough to cart around, you can hold it or set it in your lap or on a stand, and it gives you a breezy connection to the web, with videos, social networking, reading and browsing all right up front.

Think about this, though: If you were going to go on a trip — for pleasure or business — would you leave your laptop at home and go just with an iPad?

PCWorld's Harry McCracken recently got to fly with his iPad and, at first blush, found it to be a superior experience than using his laptop. McCracken writes: "…it was my first time using an iPad on an airplane — and as I'd hoped, this gadget was born for air travel."

Whereas a laptop can quickly get unwieldy when the person in front of you decides to recline, or a pain when you have to curl your hands like a praying mantis to type, the iPad "is so small and sits so low that it worked just fine," according to McCracken.

"I browsed the Web, did instant messaging, tweeted, and caught up on e-mail," he continues, "and was almost as productive as I would have been with a full-blown computer in less tight quarters. And the battery had almost 80 percent of its charge left after two and a half hours of work."

Is he ready to ditch his laptop though and travel solo with the iPad? Not quite yet. He runs into the same snag reporters, artists and designers often come up against: there's no good alternative for Photoshop on the iPad.

So, do you work in a field where the iPad would be enough to have you ditching your laptop? Is traveling with a tablet the most comfortable way for you to get around? Tell us in the comments section.