I am currently on a flight from Las Vegas to ATL taking advantage of AirTran's Gogo WIFI partnership as a paying customer. It is my first mile high post, so bare with my as my bits make their way back to the hardwired Internet on the ground.

My initial flight out to Vegas a few days ago offered a free service trial for the flight, which I took advantage... since the flight offered no in-flight entertainment. Based upon my experience on that flight, I had no reservations ponying up the $9.95 to make my 3.5 hour flight back east a little more "entertainmenty".

For the most part I have been impressed with the service. Video sites such as Hulu and YouTube is a little spotty... as well, IM also lags a little, but was functional. I was able to write and send corporate and personal email, accessed a VPN, managed a hosting account at Godaddy, as well as keep up-to-date on blogs such as Lifehacker and iJustine. Overall the service offers relatively smooth connection with standard HTML content pages.

My real issue comes down to having enough battery life for a long flight. Airtran does not offer in-seat power (which is a contradiction to offering WIFI), so my use of the service is limited by my one battery... about 2.5 hours of the flight.

This leads me to one big question to consider... will the combination of business class drinking and WIFI serve as a gateway drug to unnecessary SkyMall purchases? I am guessing research will prove there is a direct correlation to post flight delivery of Harry Potter magic wand reproductions and Snuggies. Anyhow, 24 minutes of battery power remaining... better get back to Facebook.