While I love the concept of Aircell’s gogo in-flight internet service, I never really felt that the pricing made much sense.  It is too expensive on the shorter flights and since the vast majority of passengers are connecting the costs could really get out of hand in a hurry.  Aircell appears to have seen the light a bit and has announced a couple different alternate pricing options since the initial $13/$10 launch point.

The latest pricing option seems to be a change for the $13 version.  Previously it was offered for flights greater than three hours in duration.  It is now being reported that as of July 15th the $13 option will be a 24-hour day pass.  That is great for folks with connections, day-trips or other similar schedules who will have multiple flights in a single day.  There is also the $50 monthly option that is available on either Delta or Virgin America.  Not sure why they can’t make the monthly good on all their systems regardless of the carrier but I’m willing to bet it has something to do with who gets paid how much for the subscription.

Both of these options, along with the $8 mobile device option are moving very much in the right direction of reasonable pricing for the service.  Hopefully the downward pressure on the pricing will continue and it will become a more reasonable opportunity.  Or I’ll just continue to read books on my Kindle (which I love) while listening to music that I bring on-board.  I do like the down time quite a bit.

Also interesting is the report over at Runway Girl about usage rates of the gogo service.  There are some who don’t see the long-term viability of the service.  And then there are carriers like Continental who are simply waiting to see some other carrier report profits from it before pursuing the technology.  In the mean time, Virgin America is reporting ~10-15% utilization of the service on average for its passengers.  That means somewhere between 15-20 users per flight, depending on the load factors they are seeing.  I find it hard to believe that they can be profitable at $300/flight in revenue.

As part of a promo with Delta Gogo has introduced a promo code good for the next three weeks to provide a single half-price session on their in-flight internet service.

Save 50% on a single Gogo session (except segment pass and 24hr pass) until 7/19/2009. Use code 156FLYDA.
To Use your discount on a wi-fi session:
1) Select ‘gogoinflight’ as the wireless network and launch you browser
2) Sign in or click ‘Buy’ to create a new account
3) On ‘Payment Info’ page, enter promo code in space provide (code is case sensitive)
4) Click ‘Update Total’
Thank you! And Happy Travels,
Gogo Inflight Internet

This almost makes the cost of the service reasonable.

Now that I’ve had a few days to actually use the device and I’ve read my first book on it (David Maraniss’s Rome 1960: The Olympics that Changed the World) I finally have some real world experience on which to base a proper review of the device.  I love it.

I truly enjoyed having the built-in dictionary available for a few of the more obscure words that Maraniss tossed in to the story.  Similarly, I’m a big fan of the ability to annotate a story.  There is a reference in Rome 1960 to another story, Pitch Invasion, that seems pretty cool.  Being able to search for that book directly from the device was great.  It not actually being available was a minor setback, but such is life.  Normally in that situation I’d write something on the scrap of paper I’m using as a bookmark and then hope I remember to look it up at some point.  The Kindle shortens that cycle and helps me actually remember to find the things I’m looking for.  That may become an expensive change for me, but I’m willing to accept that risk.

The battery life has been incredibly impressive.  People I’ve seen over the past few days keep asking me how long the battery lasts.  I honestly cannot give them an answer as I haven’t run it out yet.  I haven’t even managed to get it below 50%.  I keep the radio off unless I’m actively downloading something to help extend the battery life and it seems to be working out quite nicely.

I have but one complaint.  The forward/back buttons are a little difficult to click.  They redesigned those keys because folks complained they were too easy to press accidentally.  I think that they went too far in their efforts.  It isn’t really a problem, but it does require a rather forceful and purposeful action to turn the page.  That is probably what they wanted, but it is a bit annoying to me.

Also, I’m not sure why they made the keyboard area so big.  Make the device smaller or the screen bigger with that much real estate to work with.  But that isn’t too big a deal.

No complaints about the device otherwise.  I’m not certain that it is a compelling upgrade from the K1, but it is certainly a quality product.

Mine arrived about 40 minutes ago, a day early.  I’m super excited.  I’ve been a bit jealous of my wife’s K1 model and when the new one was finally made available for ordering I wasted no time in placing my order.  Now, after about 35 minutes of using it (it took a few minutes to get the box open and plug it in) I have to say that I’m pretty happy with the product overall.  It is certainly too early to draw any final conclusions on the device, but so far things are looking pretty good.

The packaging is pretty, not that it matters too much, but they seem to have put in a bit of effort to go above and beyond the basic cardboard box.  The box contents are very simple: the device, a USB charging cable with AC outlet adapter and the getting started guide.  Simple and to the point, with nothing extra or unnecessary.  I like that.

I plugged in and was up and running very shortly thereafter. 

So, how awesome is it?  Honestly just about the same as the K1.  That’s pretty awesome in my book, as I’m a big fan of the K1, but the K2 does not appear to be revolutionary or even all that much different to me in the interface or the functionality.  I know that it isn’t really supposed to be, so I’m not disappointed in it, but for those who are expecting something materially different, this isn’t it.

When the initial specs were announced I suggested that it might actually be too thin.  I still feel that way.  Holding it in my hand it just didn’t feel natural.  It is much, much wider than it is thick and that makes holding it difficult.  Plus, the back is now a brushed metal rather than the rubberized grip material that the K1 was made of.  This allowed it to continuously slide out of my hand while I was trying to hold it and read it.  Once I slipped it into its fancy Kindle cover, conveniently now an additional purchase item rather than included, things got much better.  The cover isn’t particularly thick, but it is enough that when flipped open it provides an appropriately significant bulk to the device.  The inside of the cover is also a feltish material, providing some friction against my hand.  It makes it much more manageable to hold.  

The other dimensions are basically the same as the K1 so that isn’t much of a change.  You can see from the photo that it fits reasonably well in my hand (my hands are not huge by any means – men’s medium or large for gloves) and the balance while holding it seems pretty good.  I think that the “Prev Page” button is just a bit too high to be comfortable to reach with my left thumb while reading one-handed, just like the K1 was, but the K2 is at least closer to reachable.  Still not perfect, but not too bad.

Regarding readability and the newly upgraded display, I am rather impressed.  The images (I’ve mostly been using the NY Times for images thus far in my testing) are sharp and the additional shades of gray do make a significant difference in the overall quality.  From a text perspective I don’t see much of a difference, but the K1 was pretty good so the K2 keeping that high quality is good enough for me.   Page turning is snappy and switching between books is pretty quick.  Definitely no complaints from me on that front.

The USB connector allows for both connectivity to a computer (it installed all on its own on my XP SP3 system and appeared as a removable drive for loading additional content on to the device) and for charging of the unit.  I’m a big fan of USB-based charging for portable electronics so I am pretty happy on this front.  But I am annoyed that, much like the Blackberry Storm, the USB cable is not a standard Mini-B connector but a Micro-B connector.  Why?  Why oh why was there a need to change this standard?  There are millions upon millions of Mini-B cables already out there.  I see the the Micro-B is a bit thinner, but I’m annoyed that I am basically going to have two sets of cables to carry now.

I was able to load a document on to the device using the USB connection quite quickly and that was completely functional.  Ditto for getting books downloaded from the store using the WhisperNet connection from Sprint. 

Some interesting things that seem to be “missing” based on the K1 are a user-replaceable battery and a memory expansion slot.  I have no idea why they would skip out on these two things.  Yes, it has 2GB of on-board memory built in, of which 1.5GB is usable.  And the books are not incredibly huge (The Three Musketeers is ~822KB; today’s NY Times is almost 2MB) so there is capacity for a lot on the device.  But still, leave room for future growth. Ditto on the battery issue.  Why make replacing it a maintenance event rather than a quick swap by the end user?  Did they learn nothing from the annoyance at Apple about the iPhone battery situation??

So, there’s my first 40 minutes worth of experience in a nutshell.  I’ll be on the road non-stop for a week starting on Friday so I’ll have plenty of time to put it through its paces and do a more thorough review.  But at a glance it looks pretty nice, if not revolutionary.

Dell apparently really doesn’t want to be competitive in the NetBook market space.  The Mini 9 was OK and a reasonable option.  The Mini 10 was supposed to be all that and a bit better, thanks to a bigger screen and keyboard, among other things.

And then they did something ridiculously stupid.  The RAM configuration is “fixed” at 1GB.  It doesn’t start at 1GB like every other NetBook out there (a ridiculous limitation imposed by Microsoft in an attempt to protect their Vista market).  It is fixed at 1GB.  No after-market upgrades are currently possible on the Mini 10.  What a bunch of morons. 

In the meantime, if you want a 10″ NetBook model today, grab the Asus 1000HE.  They haven’t made the mistake of artificially limiting the hardware.

Amazon has finally announced the much awaited update to their Kindle eReader product.  The new one is thinner, lighter and has improved battery life, download speeds, button layout and an upgrade to a 16-shade display from the current 4 shades.

The price remains the same ($359) and it will continue to operate on Sprint’s data network, so no love for the folks outside the USA.  They expect to start shipping the devices on February 24, and I would expect that there will be reasonably long waitlists, just like when the original version was released.

I’m actually somewhat concerned that it might be too thin to feel natural in your hand while reading.  That’s one thing I really like about the original.  I guess I’ll have to wait a couple weeks to find out.

The file formats supported remain pretty much the same, too, which is not so impressive.  I had hoped that would get a bit better.

They’re going to sell a ton of these, including one to me, but it isn’t clear that they are revolutionary or even really a significant upgrade over the original model.  It will basically be all about the screen.  Hopefully I’ll know more very soon after February 24th.

The prices on these things seem to vary wildly within a $70 range.  And they seem to be at the bottom of that range today, at least at Buy.com.  They’ve got the 160GB/6-cell battery version in Sapphire Blue on sale for $329 with free shipping.  That’s a great price for this model. 

Figure another $10-15 for the memory upgrade and you’re good to go for under $350.  Not bad at all.

New screens, new chipsets and new keyboards.what’s not to love?

Asus has started offering pre-order sales of their 1000HE model, the first NetBook that uses Intel’s latest chipset.  The processor is incrementally faster, but the front-side bus has a notable improvement which will speed things up a bit, not that the systems are all that slow to begin with.  And then there is the improved video – up to 720p resolution from the current 600 pixel standard.  Laptop magazine also says the keyboard is better, so take that for what it is worth.

Or you could hold out for a model using the NVIDIA chipset that will support 1080p resolution.  None shipping yet, but you never know when one will be announced.  I’d be a little worried that the increased graphics capabilities will reduce battery life, but that is still an unknown at this point.

Go light, save your back.  Everyone wins.

It’ll likely be another year or so until Windows 7 is fully baked and released, but Microsoft released the version information today and there was an interesting bit in there related to the NetBook market.  There is a specific version of Windows 7 that will be sold to OEMs making NetBooks.  Just like the current policy of limiting NetBooks to XP Home from the manufacturer, however, the new plan is fraught with problems.  Big problems.

Actually there is only one “big” problem.  The Windows 7 Starter Edition (for emerging markets and NetBooks) will be limited to only running three applications at a time.  That’s right.  Three.  I understand the desire to not tax the hardware so much that the performance sucks and folks complain.  But only three applications?  That’s just ridiculous.  A web browser, Acrobat and a media player and you’re done.  Wanna run Skype?  Sorry.  You’ll need to close something else.  It is just plain stupid.

And there’s the other motivation for Microsoft.  They can sell the OS upgrade to the Home Premium version for folks who actually want to use the system like a normal computer.  That’s extra money in Microsoft’s pocket.

But at least they are working on a version of the OS that is lightweight enough to run on the “limited” hardware that a NetBook presents, not that they are actually all that limited for most scenarios.

Sure, the Android is cool because it is open source and the OS is from Google.  Or something like that.  But the device isn’t perfect and users have been hoping for something better to come along.

Looks like you might not have to wait for new hardware – just a quick software hack – to meet your needs.  There are reports circulating of a hack to the OS and the browser software that now enables multi-touch on the screen.  Such capability has long been reported to be present in the hardware but software limited thanks to patent claims by Apple.  Looks like the hackes don’t seem to care too much about that.

This doesn’t make it perfect, but it is a nice improvement to the platform.

Happy hacking.