Flying: Good and Bad News

First the bad news: Boeing is terminating its Connexion service, which offered Wi-Fi to passengers in flight. Despite the fact that early users raved about the service, apparently no one used the thing, which cost $26.95 for data access throughout the flight.

Analysts are puzzled, but I think the reason is quite obvious why Connexion never took off: Because I never flew on a plane that offered the service? Why's that? Because it was never approved for use on domestic flights. That's cutting out millions of people, your most active wireless users, from the market. And now that you can't take a laptop on British flights, who exactly was going to use Connexion? In today's world of airborne paranoia, I suppose universal approval just wasn't in the cards. It's all just a sad day for business travel.

On the other hand, my good friend Eric Meyerson sends this photo gallery of cases designed for carrying your notebook and other electronics if you're forced to check them instead of carrying them on. I've never used any of these personally, but the idea is sound: Protect the laptop in layers of foam, then clad that in hard plastic or metal. Considering laptops travel on UPS in flimsy cardboard boxes without much damage, these look like the way to go. Give 'em a spin and report back if you do; I'm interested in hearing first-hand reports. After all, you won't be using your laptop on the flight, anyway.