Complaining about airport security isn’t anything new. What is new, however, is the commonplace acceptance of technology by TSA personnel. Items such as cell phones, tablets, and laptops, breeze through the checkpoint these days. That wasn’t always the case.

I can’t lay claim to being the first person to take a laptop on an airplane, but I’m one of a few people around today who remember what it was like.

Back in 1992, I wrote a laptop book for TAB/Windcrest, The Concise PC Notebook and Laptop User’s Guide. In that book I wrote a chapter on how to deal with the trauma of Airport Security.

Yes, this was before the TSA, Orange Alerts, and terrorism. Back before 9-11, the ominous air travel threat was hijacking. And obviously, laptop technology was so alien to people — particularly airport security dweebs — that laptop computers deserved keen scrutiny.

I’m exaggerating a tad.

In 1988, the Bad Guys blew up a jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland. The bomb was planted in a tape recorder. (I’ll explain what a tape recorder is in another blog post.) Since that incident, all electronics were suspect, particularly laptop computers. This was true despite their diminutive size and the inconvenient way in which laptops store high explosives. But don’t tell that to Airport Security.

While you could keep on your shoes in the 1980s and 90s, you did have to present your laptop to airport security.

You had to hand them the laptop; it couldn’t go through the x-ray machine or metal detector. (The science was vague on this admonition, but the manuals insisted that you don’t x-ray the device.)

You had to open the laptop.

You had to turn on the laptop.

Because of this requirement, I advised readers of my laptop book to leave for the airport with the device fully charged. Further, it helped to bring along the power cord just in case the battery was low and the device didn’t power-on. (That happened to me once, and we actually had to leave the security area to find a power socket.)

The vigilant, highly-trained security individuals of the era merely wanted to see text on the laptop’s screen. Apparently a boot ROM message was solid assurance that the device wasn’t, in fact, a cleverly-disguised bomb.

Seriously.

Further, I advised my readers to keep an unformatted floppy in drive A, which laptop’s had back in those days. That way the boot sequence wouldn’t run and you didn’t have to spend your time in the security area powering up and then powering down the laptop. Lest you forget, in 1992, DOS was king and sometimes a computer took several minutes to run through its startup exercises.

Yes, it was an ordeal, but only a minor one when compared with airport security today.

In fact, I’m on a plane as I write this blog post. With me I’m carrying a laptop, a tablet, and two smartphones. I didn’t have to turn on any of them, but they did have to ride innocently through the X-Ray Machine of Death in their own bus tub.

Now had my electronic gizmos been something more dangerous, such as a 6-ounce bottle of shampoo or a jar of peanut butter, then airport security would have dutifully confiscated them, bolstering the safety of all who travel by air. I feel safer, but at least I have with me a laptop, where I can write a blog post high in the sky, above the state of Washington, knowing that the peanut butter terrorists will have to try again some other day.