Comments on: Boeing Shuts Down Connexion

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 15:54:13 +0000

Well after the recent terror threat overseas, it seems like laptops “at least for now” won't be traveling with us business class fellos after all. I would use the service if they also offered some sort of power assist. They could use USB, or a tricky new device that will GRADUALLY charge your battery through the ear-phone piece (giving you maybe 15 minutes tops). If they came out with built in internet access with one time fee, and absolute connectivity, I'm sure that they would not only recoup costs, but that would be more popular than paying 5.00 to watch a 5″ screen 3 seats up, that is colorless and fuzzy anyway.

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 13:55:23 +0000

I use to fly economy, the WiFi was available everywhere in the plane. My laptop carries an extra battery instead of CD-ROM and it runs for 4-5 hours. My company is happy to pay less than 20 bugs to have me working for that time.
Alex

By: GregA

GregA — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 13:39:11 +0000

I would guess the cost has deterred nonbusiness travelers. But assuming that's not an issue with the company you work for, problem is many companies stopped flying business class long ago to save money. Newsflash – many airlines do not offer electrical power in coach! Even the best laptop batteries don't last beyond a few hours. Additionally, running WiFi burns up your battery even faster. So I blame non use on the airlines; kudos for offering WiFi – but you blew it by not having electrical power available to keep laptops running! Duh.

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 10:51:05 +0000

I have used it at least once. Surfing the web between Germany and Venezuela made the 10 hours flight appear much shorter to me. I appreciated the service very much, the quality was good and from my point of view the prices were reasonable for business people.
However, I am not surprised that no one used it. In contrast to Boeing I do know the reason why. ;-)
When I first tried to use the service my laptop smoothly connected to the Access Point and it received an IP address via DHCP. But default route was not correctly set and DNS servers didn't seem to work. Thus, when I opened my browser I saw how it tried to connect to the login page where I could enter my credit card information. But I never reached this page, the browser failed to access any site I tried. I suppose every average business guy would have shut down his laptop at this point and would have slept instead of working.
Being a computer scientist working with network protocols I continued and kicked up a network analyzer. I learned the IP address the Access Point was trying to forward my Browser to from the HTTP stream. When I entered this adress manually, I succeded and reached the payment portal. I paid 15 bugs for 10 hours flight and from that moment the internet connection was working great.
Maybe Booing should have asked some passengers why they didn't make use of the service. If 99% answered: "because it does not work" they might have realized that something was wrong.
Before you start wondering: I the same experience on two flights (Germany->Venezuela and back) with two Laptops, one running Linux, the other one Windows XP.

Regards,
Alex

By: James

James — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 17:55:33 +0000

I never used the service, it looks too expensive and clunky for me. What do you guys think? Anyone actually use it?