More and more airlines are offering passengers a chance to use PCs and tablets in flight to get some work and/or play done. This week the newly released Samsung Chromebook became the latest way for airplane passengers to pass the time. The Google Chrome blog site reports that it has teamed up with Virgin America to offer the use of the netbooks on certain flights.
Google states that if you are flying Virgin America from San Francisco, Boston, Dallas/Fort Worth or Chicago O'Hare, Virgin America will have what it is calling a "Chrome Zone" at its departure gates. You can check out and use a Chromebook for free in the terminal and also use it on the Virgin America flight you are on with free WiFi. That's a good thing since Chromebooks pretty much need some kind of Internet connection to really work well. As some of you may know they are designed to run apps mostly online or via a cloud connection.
In addition to the Virgin America deal, visitors to the Ace Hotel in New York City will also get a free Chromebook to use in their rooms. It can even be taken out of the hotel to use with both WiFi and 3G Internet connections. Both the Ace Hotel and Virgin America Chromebook trials should launch starting today and run through the summer. It should be interesting to see if this promotion will convince regular notebook users that having an "always on" netbook might be a good alternative.
Image via Google
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