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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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CES 2009 had a ton of news come out of it, but nothing truly groundbreaking that I read.  Still, there were a few interesting nuggets worth looking at a bit more for their suitability to travel technology.

One such bit was a report coming out from Freescale suggesting that $400 is too much to pay for a NetBook device and that they had found a solution to drive the prices down even further.  They’ve got a new chipset that will sell at volume discount prices such that OEMs will be able to see units at $199 or $299.

There is a review (and a bunch of photos) of some prototypes at notebooks.com that suggests it is a pretty good physical design.  The pictures look an awfully lot like the Asus AspireOne shell, with the mouse buttons on the sides of the touchpad.

There is mention of the operating system – a stripped down Linux build – and also the limited application set supported – a web browser and video player, but nothing else and no ability to install more.  That’s a HUGE problem.  There have been many “internet appliances” before, and they all sucked because they were too limited.  The concept of the $199 NetBook seems destined to follow in that path, with their different/weaker chipset and limited OS.

Don’t get me wrong – I understand the value of pricing pressure on the products.  But manufacturers need to balance price against having something that is actually functional as more than just a web browser.  Sony is nuts thinking that a $900 NetBook is competitive, but at the same time, a $199 model that doesn’t do very much is a losing proposition.  Besides, paying $400 for one isn’t such a horrible price point, and there are plenty in the $300-350 range that are pretty functional.

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I’m a huge fan of the cellular WAN cards and the connectivity options that they provide.  Extending that access to a group of people was always a bit of work, but made it real easy to set up an office on the go or otherwise share the joy of being online. 

Novatel is addressing the complexities of the sharing with their new line of EvDO routers.  The device is a combination of a cellular WAN card and wireless router.  A single device to handle both the LAN and WAN halves of the connection.  Plus, it looks good.  It even runs on a battery rather than requiring a plug, so you can set up your own personal hotspot on the train.  I’m officially in lust.

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Both Alaska and Southwest have previously announced plans to operate in-flight internet using a satellite-based solution from Row 44.  Now another player has finally launched service in the same space.  ViaSat will also be offering Ku-band satellite connectivity using pretty much the same technology as Row 44, including the same antenna provider.  And ViaSat doesn’t seem to have any commercial carriers signed up to partner with.  But they also don’t really seem to care about that.

They’ve inked a deal with Lufthansa’s Technik group to provide connectivity to private planes, including arriving as standard equipment on some models.  What does this mean to you?  Probably very little unless you’re in the market for a Bombardier Challenger 300.  But seeing another player in the in-flight broadband space is always a nice thing, as it means more opportunities for carriers to implement solutions and keep us connected on the go.

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After months and months of anticipation, Sprint has finally launched their XOHM (WiMax) service.  In downtown Baltimore, MD.  With expectations of 2-4 Mbit service on average and peaks of 10 Mbit the bandwidth is certainly impressive.  The location of the service, however, is not.  Baltimore is a relatively small city (likely why it was chosen) and the downtown area is relatively poor, so I’m not sure that this will actually benefit too many people.  But at least Sprint managed to get one city up and running.

No voice service on the network, yet, and a modem will run you $45 if you’re in the neighborhood.  Oh, and the service will be $10/day, $35/month or $50/month for unlimited data for life.  I don’t understand that last one and how it is different from the $35 plan, but I’m sure it isn’t just that they are charging $15 more for the same thing.

Chicago and Washington, DC appear to be the next cities scheduled for activation, with Dallas, Fort Worth, Boston, Providence and Philadelphia following eventually.

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With the announcement a couple weeks ago that Southwest has finally set a date for the testing of their in-flight Internet connectivity it seems that the majority of the US-based carriers have something in the works.  Runway Girl has a couple good posts (Post 1; Post 2) about the various options, but I haven’t been able to find an exhaustive list of all the offerings from all the carriers.  So I decided to put one together.  Here are the airlines, the service and the status of the deployment efforts:

• American Airlines – Aircell’s gogo service currently operational on 767s for NYC-LAX/SFO/MIA routes.
• Alaska Air – Row 44, currently planned for testing on a single plane.
• Jet Blue – LiveTV, but only on one plane and no word on when additional rollout will happen.
• Continental – LiveTV on the entire domestic-focused fleet, starting in January ‘09
• Delta – Aircell’s gogo service, expected on the MD8x planes first and on the entire fleet by mid-2009
• Frontier – Likely LiveTV since they already use the service for television on the planes, but I haven’t seen an official release.
• United – Nothing planned/announced
• US Airways – Nothing planned/announced, though back in February they said they were looking at it.  The fact that they are pulling the entertainment systems to save weight makes me suspect of their ability to actually get it into their planes soon, particularly since they have nothing specific announced, but they supposedly are looking at it.
• Southwest – Row 44, currently planned for testing in Q4 ‘08
• Virgin America – Aircell’s gogo service coming soon and will be fleet-wide.

The Aircell and LiveTV services are both terrestrial, which Row 44 is a satellite-based solution.  Row 44 and Aircell’s gogo are both supposed to be “full” Internet service while LiveTV is very up front about the fact that they are providing access to a very limited subset of the internet, and they’ve increased the content available recently.

Hopefully this helps (and I didn’t mess up the details too much).  If I did, I’m sure you’ll let me know.

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