> Doesn't scale very well.  A modern airliner has a couple hundred
> seats...
a virgin pendalino train also has a couple of hundred seats, didn't stop
them offering standard british 240V sockets for passenger use (marked as
"laptops and mobile phones only" but people use other small appliances too
and noone seems to care).

i don't know how many laptops they can power at once per carrige but i've
never heared of them tripping out. I guess a buisness or first class section
on a plane may have a higher density of laptop users than a train though so
lets do some sums assuming a pretty extreme case.

lets say a laptop averages 50W (and i reckon they average quite a bit lower
than that unless everyones gaming, don't forget if batteries are banned then
there won't be battery charging to worry about) and 50% of the users on a 3
class configures A380 are using them (again i think this many laptop users
would be rare). Thats a total of 27.5KW. I wouldn't think thats all that
much for a plane of that size. Also a laptop user is unlikely to be using
the in flight entertainment which i'd think could easilly be drawing as much
as a laptop.




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