When Barack Obama becomes president in about two months, he will be expected to give up his trusty BlackBerry, which has been securely fastened to his belt for years. There are a multitude of reasons why he will have to surrender his portable email device including security concerns, the Presidential Records Act (all correspondence is fair game for public viewing) and the looming threat of subpoenas.

To balance out the depravation of some technologies, Obama plans to be the first U.S. president to have a laptop on his Oval Office desk.

Though some have argued that Obama might be able to break the rules and retain email access, Diana Owen disagrees. "They could come up with some bulletproof way of protecting his e-mail and digital correspondence, but anything can be hacked," she said. "The nature of the president's job is that others can use e-mail for him."

While gaining many privileges, Obama will have function without a few of life's little conveniences in return.