Fuji
I to was in search of the paperless flight deck and felt that paper charts should be a thing of the past until I got a bit deeper into the research.
At the end of the day most of the computer technology is not reliable enough to use in the air for the replacement of approach plates, IO540 has done a lot of work on this and has come to more or less the same conclusion as my self.
The way I have gone for private aviation is a good laptop loaded with "Jeppveiw" and a flight planning program and a small printer, this enables me to flight plan and file on line and print the plates and plogs for a flight all from by hotel room. I know that I still have a lot of "paper" but the whole package weighs less than a set of Jepps and it won't "crash" in the air.
For my professional flying I have to endure the "less paper cockpit" all held on two tablet computers, the aircraft performance and W & B functions for pre flight planning are very good it is only when you get the thing in the air that the problems start and I shall outline a recent incident to highlight why these things should be stowed when the engines are started.
The day in question we had just lifted off when the # 1 air conditioning pack trips off line passing about 4000ft we had the ECAM drill done and need to check the MEL for single pack operations. I tried to fire up the tablet computer but it just refused to load, the FO passed me his tablet and this one loaded but due to the bright sunlight was almost impossible to use as when you tapped the screen to select an item another one was selected !
To get around this problem I had to shut all the window blinds and huddle down in a corner to get the thing to work, the data I needed was only extracted as we passed FL290 which was lucky as the highest level we could take was FL300.
Just to add to my annoyance with this device it is loaded with approach plates from the European Aeronautical Group (who ever they are!) and these are plates are by far the worst I have ever used.
With two computers and an FMC database the "less paper" cockpit is just about workable but for private flight in a small aircraft paper is the way to go for things that happen in the air as you don't have the redundancy of multiple computers.
And I almost forgot to add the batteries have a habit of going flat at the most inconvenient moments!