What to pack in your computer bag?

Dan Frakes has an awesome piece over at Macworld’s “Mobile Mac” blog today about gadgets and junk that he carries around with his laptop. I hadn’t seen Kensington’s rechargeable Portable Power Pack for Mobile Devices before. Only $60 and 3.5 ounces for 14 hours of additional VIDEO playback on my iPod? Sounds like I need this before my next overseas flight. I’m not sure if he really carried around all this stuff — it looks like it would weigh about 25 pounds if he did.

I do have one disagreement with Dan. He recommends a teeny, tiny external hard drive that’s USB only. I think it’s worth carrying the only slightly bulkier Rugged All-terrain drives from LaCie. Not only can you get up to eight times more capacity and Firewire 400 and 800 ports, but you also have a solid, tank-like shell around your precious data. I also carry around two little doodads for reading compact flash and SD flash memory cards through the USB port. It’s a result of one too many times when my camera battery died or I misplaced the special cord to connect it directly to my laptop.