For the second time in recent months, I changed trains at the Newark Broad Street station on my way to New York City and ended up sitting next to another Nokia N800 owner on the 15-minute ride into the city.

My unnamed seatmate said his Internet Tablet enabled him to read blogs and other websites on the train without having to carry a laptop. We were long separated before I wondered whether he was connecting live via his cellphone or reading pages he'd grabbed before his commute.

Nokia once lent me a cellphone and wireless account and I surfed on my train ride into the city and even while walking from the train station to work. That was simply great. Surfing while literally on the go -- and not just parked at a Starbucks while "away from my usual access point" -- felt tremendously liberating. Alas, the outrageous pricing of every telecom has kept me from further on-the-go use of my NIT.

When our broadband provider had a several-hour-long service interruption a couple weeks ago, I could hardly use my computer. Even when working on local documents there were things I needed to check on the internet. I couldn't read the paper (washingtonpost.com), respond to my mail (that is, email), translate (online dictionary atsealang.net/khmer/) or ask questions of my colleagues (voip was out too). The major work I was engaged in entailed collecting geographic information from various websites (CIA World Factbook, statoids.com, Wikipedia) and integrating it with our local content; I couldn't make any headway on that.

In fact, without the internet, I was flailing around helplessly.

This morning, I was in fact able to work on my laptop on the train ride, converting various files I'd downloaded earlier. I only had to deal with 35 internet-less minutes. But work or regeneration time, laptop or internet tablet, I can see I'm getting closer to the point of needing that Bluetooth-cellphone connection for the commute.