Interesting looks nice :)

Sweet !

Check out the new IFE from Virgin America, "Red" http://youtube.com/watch?v=609i-OhFhoQ - geekalicious.

That's almost identical to the Delta one in functionality. And exact same display/card swiper. Delta didn't have qwerty, though, and no food ordering that I saw.

It's good to see competition in this space.

Of course, it's highly likely that Virgin America will never get off the ground due to it being owned by a foreign company...

I really hope Virgin America gets the greenlight to start operating. They'd be based in SFO and focus on high quality, low cost service... That Red IFE would be on all of their flights, even the shortest domestic ones. I think their system also has a larger screen (they claim it would be the largest seatback screen of any US airline).

They're also looking for software developers to come up with crazy things to do with their IFE that they haven't thought about themselves... A very cool approach in my book - very refreshing to see an airline with such an open attitude :)

Every one of the "advanced" IFE systems (the ones which do true VOD) I've seen seems to be running Linux. (including VS and EK).

It would be interesting to look into the companies involved, etc.

EY still wins in my book, because 1) massage chairs in business class 2) fully-flat beds in business class 3) free internet (first with boeing, now with panasonic)

What's Panasonic's Internet system?

http://news.com.com/2061-10785_3-6117764.html

EY is signed up, and it is supposed to go live in February, but I'm not sure if it happened or not.

There's an L-band system (being used for GSM microcell relay) but enh, I want Ku band for broadband data from the plane much more than I want voice.

I saw the same thing when I flew JetBlue. When there were technical difficulties, it rebooted, and there were NFS timeouts or something like that showing on the screen, which amused me more than the fact that it ran Linux.

you're flying on one of the old song planes.

Heh, thanks. Interesting.

Interesting, the interface that I got to crash on my flight over to New Zealand last year was running Windows.