Filed under: How-tos, Internet, MacBook
How to get the most out of in-flight Wi-Fi
Over the weekend, I discovered that my annual flight from Phoenix to Alabama (via Atlanta) had in-flight Wi-Fi. Best of all? It happened to be free, thanks to eBay jumping in on the free holiday Wi-Fi bandwagon. The promotion was already active on the flight I took from Phoenix to Atlanta. If you're traveling for Thanksgiving or Christmas, here's some things to consider about utilizing this service with your MacBook, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air.Is it worth it?
It all depends. It was very nice being able to talk with my fiancé (who, on his part used FlightStats.com to inform me of where I was at) during the flight. I'm no fan of flying, and when the turbulence got bad, it was a nice distraction. However, I did notice I got a slight motion-induced headache and had to take a break. If the seat in front of you is reclined to the point where your computer is rammed into your chest, the person in the seat next to you is taking up half of yours with their elbows, or if you're inclined to motion sickness, this may not be for you. Still, a free promotion is the perfect time to give the service a try.
Normally, this service can cost anywhere from $6-15 for a flight. Gogo's pricing structure is $5.95 for a flight less than 90 minutes, $9.95 for a flight between 90 minutes and three hours, $12.95 for one more than three hours or a daily pass on a single airline. If you're just using your iPhone, it's $5.95 for a flight less than 90 minutes and $7.95 for one longer than that.
Read on for tips on maximizing your battery life in flight.
Normally, this service can cost anywhere from $6-15 for a flight. Gogo's pricing structure is $5.95 for a flight less than 90 minutes, $9.95 for a flight between 90 minutes and three hours, $12.95 for one more than three hours or a daily pass on a single airline. If you're just using your iPhone, it's $5.95 for a flight less than 90 minutes and $7.95 for one longer than that.
Read on for tips on maximizing your battery life in flight.
What to do before your flight
- Charge your battery as much as possible. If this means rubbing elbows a family with seven kids or someone who's taking up three seats to access the only plug in the vicinity of your gate, then bite the bullet and do so. More airports are creating dedicated power stations for mobile users, but those tend to be crowded with those charging their cell phones. If you've got a mini-surge protector with USB ports in your carry-on, you can charge your iPhone or iPod at the same time as your Mac, while making friends with two other power-starved travelers.
- Make sure your firmware is up to date. Apple's released a number of firmware updates over the years designed to tweak battery performance. Also, calibrate your battery if you have the time.
- Transfer any media you plan to watch to your internal drive from external storage, if you normally keep it there (see below).
During the flight
- Reduce monitor brightness. This is the single most important power saver you can implement on the fly. I find I can turn the brightness down next to nothing and can still view most things on my computer clearly. Even knocking the setting down to the halfway mark added a good 20-30 minutes to my battery life.
- Turn off Bluetooth, unless you're using wireless headphones. Even though it's not going to cause navigational issues for your flight, it still chews up a little bit of battery power that you don't need to waste.
- If you have an external drive, do not leave it hooked up to the laptop. Not only does transferring your movies and music to your internal drive save you some power, but some US airlines don't allow you to use outboard storage during flight.
- Switch to integrated graphics, if available. Dual-GPU MacBook Pro models can save power (while giving up some performance on 3D applications) by moving to the lower-end graphics card; note that you do have to log out and back in to switch.
- Don't use the illuminated keyboard, if your Mac is so equipped.
- Quit any program you're not using. Don't keep your Mail application running, or if you do, set it to only check mail at certain intervals. If you're not watching a DVD, don't keep the player going. Same thing with iPhoto, iTunes, or any games you have installed. The more you're utilizing the CPU during your flight, the faster the battery depletes.
Many thanks to fellow TUAW bloggers Aron and TJ for additional battery tips I didn't think of!
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Greenie said 9:04AM on 11-25-2009
I wish more airlines offered wifi. I just purchased my next six months of plane tickets and only purchased from Airlines that offered wifi. Expensive, but worth the extra money with my line of work.
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Brian Allen said 12:37PM on 11-25-2009
Now with your tickets, you need to get your Apple Magsafe Airline Power Adapter.
I see Amazon is sold out so they most be very popular during the travel season:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000JZA4N4?ie=UTF8&tag=stereostuff-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000JZA4N4
I just love the thing and I am thinking about switching to Delta as my airlines, which has the WiFi.
The only bummer about the adapter is that it doesn't have enough power to charge the battery.
Brian Allen said 9:15AM on 11-25-2009
Were in Alabama?
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chumley said 9:36AM on 11-25-2009
Megan-
I flew from Phoenix to JFK on Delta on Monday morning to find the same promotion. The aircraft I was flying on also featured "normal" 110v power outlets in the first 10 rows of economy (most airlines always feature power in first/business class).
Since I was seated in the 9th row, I had a power outlet in between my seats and didn't have to worry about my battery on the 4 1/2 hour flight.
A good resource for checking on if power will be available on your flight (or at your seat) is checking the aircraft type for your airline at seatguru.com.
(Of course, not everything always goes as planned. Flight attendants are not IT professionals, and on my flight, after about 20 minutes, they announced that they could not get the wifi system up and running anyway. I still had a stack of movies to keep me occupied though.)
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Paul said 9:45AM on 11-25-2009
It's also a good idea to go into you International Access settings and turn the monitor's settings to greyscale. Huge battery savings there. This is provided, of course, that you're working on something that doesn't necessarily need color (Microsoft Word docs, email, etc.)
Barkin said 9:43AM on 11-25-2009
Some airlines have power ports.
http://upgrd.com/blogs/josh/the-ultimate-guide-to-american-airlines-laptop-power.html
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jake said 10:00AM on 11-25-2009
" It was very nice being able to talk with my fiancé (who, on his part used FlightStats.com to inform me of where I was at) during the flight."
You just killed your high school English teacher with that sentence.
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ch said 10:02AM on 11-25-2009
The one place we were safe from doing work and could relax is now gone. Guess you corporate sell outs can now do all the reports and email people during the whole flight.
Look good for your boss.
Sucka
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Onestopnyc said 10:14AM on 11-25-2009
Also get your MagSafe airline adapter if you have power in your seat or get an external battery pack from HyperMac. I used the MBP100 yesterday on a flight that was over 4 hours and never had to use the laptop battery.
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Icello said 11:07AM on 11-25-2009
Or fly Virgin Anerica. Normal power outlets on every seat, all the way back in economy. And wifi, but after the holiday promotion is over you have to pay.
Taylor Gautier said 10:29AM on 11-25-2009
I can't wait - I sure hope you're sitting next to me on my next flight to Phoenix.
I bet your seatmate was disappointed when you had to "take a break". What a shame for you that you couldn't talk through the whole flight!!!
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DrWho said 10:52AM on 11-25-2009
I think (hope) that when she says talk she means chat. My understanding is they block voice services. I hope so.
Joanna D said 10:52AM on 11-25-2009
I have found the WiFi available on East Coast (www.eastcoast.co.uk) train services to be quite unreliable. I imagine the WiFi available when on a plane between countries (does anyone use planes for domestic travel anyway?) would be even worse.
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Dan said 12:11PM on 11-25-2009
I tried in-airplane wifi for a recent flight from Atlanta to a northeastern US city on Delta. I didn't expect it to be usable, but much to my immense surprise, it was actually pretty good!
I used ssh to connect to my home server 3,000 miles away. Much to my immense surprise, according to traceroute, the latency was very low! Felt zippy. My connection was flaky for only a couple seconds during the entire flight.
Sadly, it was actually faster and a more pleasant experience ssh'ing at 37,000 feet in a metal tube at Mach 0.78 than when parked at a desk on the ground somewhere. I didn't do much web surfing so I don't know what graphics-intensive download speed was like.
Provider was AirCell -- via their GoGo WiFi service. Not all airplanes had it installed at the time but heard plan was to roll out fleetwide on more airlines and airplanes. Aside from Delta, United, American, AirTran, Air Canada, and Virgin America also uses GoGo.
I can't speak about flights out in the west or in the UK, but given the U.S. east coast population density, there's no shortage of cell towers and coverage. The wifi provider uses ground-based cellular tower connections to deliver the traffic.
I got a huge kick out of tracking my own flight in near-real time on flightaware.com, seeing the altitude, airspeed, heading, exact flight plan route, precip radar returns, etc.
The WiFi stuff works great with the iPhone, too. Airlines that uses GoGo has their route map for WiFi coverage shown at:
http://www.gogoinflight.com/jahia/Jahia/site/gogo/lang/en/participatingairlines
J said 11:17AM on 11-25-2009
Ah, remember the days when people got arrested for refusing to turn off their iPhones during flight because the plane would crash. "Oh, no, wait. I'm sorry sir, we've figured out a way to monetize your use now. Feel free. Go right ahead. Leave that phone on. Oh, but don't use external storage with your laptop because that in fact will crash the plane and release a plague upon the earth like never before seen."
Airlines - the only service industry where the customer is always wrong and you've got a US Marshal at your back, covering for your BS.
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Mitchell Scott said 11:28AM on 11-25-2009
You seem to think that the airlines simply added routers to their aircraft. They had to add a crapload of shielding around every aircraft's avionics suite. And yes, the pilots can tell when you have your phone on. Ever heard the sound that a GSM phone makes to non-shielded speakers?
J said 11:41AM on 11-25-2009
Perhaps I shouldn't have derailed the thread.
You seem to think that previously the avionics equipment sat in the middle of the aisle completely naked to incoming cosmic rays, the wifi from the airport itself, and a multitude of other potential sources of radio interference. What's your source for this "crapload" of additional shielding necessary to get wifi up and running? Is the equipment placed as far from the sensitive avionics equipment as is possible? Gimme some facts, not just guesses or anecdotal "evidence."
Yes, I've heard the results of interference on unshielded speakers. I've also heard the cessation of those sounds if the phone is moved more than two feet away.
Harvey said 11:27AM on 11-25-2009
So where in this article is Slim Battery Monitor mentioned? (Hint: you used the program's icon for the main story image)
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Taylor K said 11:30AM on 11-25-2009
I recently used Delta's inflight wifi service on a flight back to Boise. I decided to stream some videos from Hulu, which worked surprisingly well for about the first 10 minutes. After 10 minutes however, the video stopped and I could hardly even browse the web. Any thoughts on why this happened? Do you think that they have a bandwidth cap, and that once you exceed it, your speed is throttled down?
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Jose said 11:43AM on 11-25-2009
Taylor,
Yes, they do have bandwidth caps; on AA's service they state that they will also do traffic shaping an prioritize things such as lower bandwidth HTTP over other UDP/TCP traffic such as gaming. They may be also shaping individual IP lease traffic, which would make sense.