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In Flight WiFi - a Hands-on Test E-mail
Monday, 23 February 2009 00:00

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I’m aboard Delta flight 1147 from MSP to ATL (that’s Minneapolis to Atlanta for those of you so fortunate as to NOT travel enough to immediately recognize airport codes) and am testing the new “WiFi with wings” service by GoGo.

At about 4,000 feet the flight attendant announced that we were at the appropriate altitude and the WiFi was on and available. My new MacBook Pro found the SSID immediately and I was presented with a registration page. Sign-up was a snap (I set up an account because I know I’m enough of a sucker to pay $9.95 for access for a short flight -- or $13.95 for an 3-plus hour flight. So, now I’m set to go and immediately headed to CNET.com for a speed test. Pretty impressive, actually! Results after the jump.

At about 1.1 mbps, the connection was much better that I expected. I ran two subsequent tests and got 1.25 and 1.44 mbps, respectively. So -- speed is acceptable. Now I realize I’m (potentially) sharing this connection with a plane full of fellow travelers and a quick walk-through the cabin revealed 27 other laptops open. I have no idea how many were connected. Next test was Outlook -- RPC over HTTP connected and synced flawlessly. I’m impressed!

On to web surfing -- pages seem to draw quickly at 33,000 feet somewhere over Nashville. I then went looking for some high-bandwidth sites -- they all operate fine. iTunes connects and the store opens and I decided to REALLY test this thing, so I bought an episode of 24 in HD. Boom! Down goes the speed. This is obviously throttled. I don’t blame them, just wanted you to know.

Last test is IM -- and my friend Amy Vetter (the Goddess of All Things QuickBooks) was on, so we exchanged some quick IMs. Worked perfectly.

Final report--- I’m giving this a B+. It’s a little pricey, but that’ll come down. Everything else seems pretty solid. Unfortunately it may mean more airplane WORK for me and fewer hours on recorded TV and movies! (smile)

We’re descending, so I gotta post!


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