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Re: Boeing's Connexion announcement

  • From: Alexander Harrowell
  • Date: Sun Oct 15 07:38:09 2006
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I wrote a 800 word article on a 15" Powerbook in Singapore Airlines economy class last year, and filed it via Connexion..and that was quite neck-yanking enough.

On 10/15/06, Todd Underwood <[email protected]> wrote:

patrick, all,

On Sun, Oct 15, 2006 at 04:56:34AM -0400, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:

> >>AC power is not required.  Bigger seats might be. :)
> >
> >bigger seats may not be required.  ac power is.
>
> However, that same 12" PB (not a large laptop by any definition) on
> Luftansa is close unusable in coach if the person in front of you
> leans back.  I had to contort pretty horribly to use it.  (Which I
> did, 'cause I -had- to send e-mail from the plane. :)  Lack of seat
> power was not an issue, I just had two batteries.  And this was BOS -
> > MUC, which ain't a short flight.
>
> Using a 15" or larger laptop on that flight is essentially
> unthinkable.  I could not have opened the laptop enough to see the
> screen.  During meals, the flight attendants made everyone sit up,
> otherwise the people behind them wouldn't have been able to eat.
> Yes, it was that bad.
>

i managed to post:

http://www.renesys.com/blog/2006/04/tracking_plane_flight_on_inter.shtml

with a 15" thinkpad from coach on lufthansa.

so that includes the ssh session to screen to coorindate with
coworkers, the several browsers, the emacs window and all the typing.
it's not a short post, it has pictures that had to be screencaptured
(or grabbed from the boeing nanog preso, respectively), but it wasn't
overly difficult.  maybe i'm just more of a contorionist than most.

the issue of power is the same, i think as the even bigger issue of
consistency/predictability which is what rodney was trying to point
out, i think.  people want to know that they're going to be able to
use the service and they want to know this in advance.  since no
airline rolled it out on every single flight and no airline gave
advance notice to passengers which flights would have the service, it
was impossible to plan on being able to use it.  that does two things:
1) it reduces the value of the service since it now becomes a happy
coincidence rather than a planned part of the work day; 2) it makes it
less likely that everyone will already have a full charge on their
laptop batteries.

having power at every seat would be easy and they should just do it.

t

_____________________________________________________________________
todd underwood                  +1 603 643 9300 x101
renesys corporation             chief of operations & security
[email protected]                http://www.renesys.com/blog/todd.shtml