The next time you're stuck in a little hotel room with nothing for entertainment but infomercials and a tattered room service menu, reach for the laptop instead of the remote control.

While entertaining television programs aren't a feature promised by most hotels, free broadband Internet access increasingly is. So instead of overpaying for an in- room movie, you might want to pull out your laptop and download a television show. The iTunes Music Store offers more than 50 television shows, thousands of episodes in all, which you can download for $1.99 each. That's a pittance compared to the cost of in-room movies, and with a significantly better selection.

All you need is a laptop, the hotel's Internet connection, and the free iTunes software, which is available from www.apple.com/itunes. The software is available for both Windows XP and MacOS X. If you think there's a chance you'll be stuck in a boring hotel room on your next trip, it can be advantageous to download and install the iTunes software before you leave town, but that's certainly not a requirement.

Once you have the iTunes software installed, you can use any reasonably fast Internet connection to buy and download television episodes. Once the episodes have been downloaded, they're stored on your laptop, so you don't need an Internet connection to watch them. Therefore, you might want to download a couple of episodes before you need them -- the night before a plane flight, for instance. Now you've got something to watch in the airplane or during an extended layover. In this case, be sure to pack a set of comfortable headphones or earbuds in your laptop bag.

Another tip: Many laptops sold in the past couple of years include DVD players. It's a feature that you might not think about much, but that can be wonderful when traveling. If you have a pile of purchased DVDs that you haven't gotten around to watching, toss them in your carry-on for free in-flight entertainment. Similarly, if you're a NetFlix subscriber, take your stack of movies with you, along with the NetFlix return mail-in envelopes -- so you don't have to cart the discs home again.

You can also use the iTunes software to listen to music, including songs that you download from the iTunes Music Store as well as your own MP3 collection. But when you're on a business trip, there's something singularly distracting about having your own private screen backed by your own collection of favorite television shows.