Which Lie-Flat Seats Offer the Best Shut-Eye?
You may get a "reasonable sleep" in a lie-flat seat on an American airline, but it won't be a "great" one, according to Flatseats.com. For that, try first class on Emirates, Cathay Pacific, All-Nippon Airways, or Singapore Airlines, which generally have the latest products installed.
"The very best sleep has to be on Emirates in the first-class suites they provide on just a few planes (the Airbus A340-500). You get your own private cabin and a most fabulous sleep comfort," says Peter Miller, marketing director for Flatseats.com, who logs between 650,000 and 1 million miles a year and takes between three and four long-haul lie-flat trips most weeks.
"The worst sleep is a difficult one, as all of the flat beds in first class offer a reasonable chance of sleeping. It is on those airlines where the seat does not recline flat where sleep is difficult. You are nearly lying down, and the end result is that you nearly sleep. First class on Saudi Arabian Airlines is one such example of this, and of course many of the older business-class seats such as those for American, United, and Delta."
The U.S.-based airlines have resisted the new lie-flat business-class seats on international flights because of the investment required, explains Miller.
An individual's favored position may determine how well he sleeps. Side-sleepers will find it difficult on really narrow seats, while those who like to lie on their stomach will have a hard time on seats that are bumpy and ridged, he says.
"Looking around the cabin, you find that about 65 percent of passengers will spend most of the time sleeping on their side, while the balance lie back and sleep straight out on their back," says Miller, who is partial to a fetal position. "I am the typical side-sleeper to such an extent that wanting to face to my right, I tend even to select the side of aircraft where I want to sit based on that — so that I face the wall and not another passenger's bottom!"
Flying on vacation, Miller eschews first class for economy, which has fares 10 to 15 times less. "I prefer to spend the money on a better hotel at the destination. This is really a product aimed at the business traveler who wants to get right off the flight after 12 hours and go straight to a meeting. For that, the seats certainly do serve the purpose of providing a good rest."
Foiling the Laptop Thieves
The makers of Computrace Personal, a software program designed to retrieve stolen laptops, are so confident in their product that they began offering a $1,000 recovery guarantee in late August.
The service is particularly attractive to remote, mobile workers, says Ben Haidri, vice president of marketing at Absolute Software, a Vancover-based company. "And there is nobody more remote or mobile than a consultant. They are traveling all the time and have access to sensitive customer data. There is a big risk if their laptop has been stolen and it happens to automatically authenticate onto a client's VPN network."
Computrace installs itself silently on the computer and is invisible to the end user, living in the laptop's partition group. It calls the monitoring center once a day — but every 15 minutes if the laptop has been reported stolen and is connected to the Internet. After the theft, it provides a variety of parameters including machine name, IP address, and e-mail addresses, Haidri explains. A team of eight current and retired police officers then works with local enforcement agencies to obtain a subpoena and retrieve the laptop. While not tamper-proof, the program survives normal attempts to clean up the hard drive.
Some of Computrace's competitors that are selling similar software have features worth looking into. While Computrace can work only while it is connected to the Internet, The CyberAngel Security Software offers real-time security, says Bradley Lide, president Nashville-based CyberAngel Security Solutions. CyberAngel utilizes a password entry system that locks up sensitive data when the password entry is breached and prevents dial-up access to remote network servers. It also restricts unauthorized users from communicating to mobile devices such as PDAs.
zTrace Technologies sells zTrace Gold, which traces the location of the laptop, and a sister application, zControl, which retrieves files and deletes sensitive information after the theft. However, Gary Bloom, vice president of sales at zTrace, acknowledges that in reality getting back all the data is not always practical. If the new user is connected to the Internet through a dial-up, it makes more sense to encrypt the larger files and delete and upload the smaller ones. Computrace customers also have the option of wiping valuable data from a stolen machine. They pay $200 for this service only when it's needed.
I've Seen Fire and I've Seen James
The youthful look and the full head of hair were gone, but a true fan of James Taylor would recognize his deep, soulful eyes anywhere. It was on a flight returning to the West Coast from Accenture's Boston office that Nanci Dalzell nudged her seat mate and asked if it were indeed Sweet Baby James sitting two rows ahead. "With the help of some Canadian Club, I managed to muster up the courage to 'smoothly' request an autograph for my sister's 50th birthday that same day," writes Dalzell, a senior manager within the firm's Resources Operating Group, in an e-mail.
Taylor closed the book he was reading and politely penned a congratulatory note to her sister as well as an autograph for Dalzell herself.
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