Are you ready to fly the Wi-Fi friendly skies?  Wireless has been on flyers’ wish lists for some time now and usually it was a luxury class only item. Delta is set to grant that wish to its flyers and is offering broadband to all its customers.

That will make it the only major U.S. airline to offer broadband Wi-Fi access on its entire domestic fleet. Alas, the best things in life aren’t free and if you want to take your allotment of the internet nirvana in flight, it will cost you a flat fee of $9.95 on flights of three hours or less and $12.95 on flights lasting more than three hours.

Delta is partnering with Aircell to offer the service, which will be branded as "Gogo".

Gogo will be offered initially on Delta’s fleet of 133 MD88/90 aircraft and will expand to the remaining domestic fleet of more than 200 Boeing 737, 757 and 767-300 aircraft throughout the first half of 2009. The airline expects to have more than 330 aircraft complete by summer 2009.

Richard Anderson, Delta’s chief executive officer says, "Delta remains committed to providing a travel experience that maximizes the time our customers spend with us onboard by offering them even more productivity options.  Our customers asked for in-flight connectivity, and we’re responding by rolling out the most extensive Wi-Fi network in the sky.  Beginning this fall, our passengers will have the ability to stay connected when they travel with us throughout the continental U.S."

What do you think? Would the ability to make in flight use of broadband have you hopping on a Delta flight versus another carrier?

Eweek says that Linux will outpace Windows in mobile internet device (MID) market by 2013? Is it any wonder? Netbooks are catching on as a great way to check email and surf the web in out of the way places without having to lug a notebook with you. The netbook credo is cheap, light and small. Mobile internet device market is expected to grow from the expected 305,000 units in 2008, to 39.6 million units in 2012.

MIDs are targeted at cloud computing, which involves checking email, IM, browsing, etc. They do not require Windows to get that done and you don’t need the one thing that Windows brings to the table, which is a large library of software.

Eweek also suggests that another form of MID; smartphones are a market that Linux is going to make inroads into as well. Mobile Linux providers LiMo, Maemo and Moblin are laying out the groundwork now so they can be out front when the market takes off. There are several new phones for LiMo that look really interesting and are sure to shake things up.

In the mobile market things are almost even amongst mobile operating systems. Linux would seem to have an advantage since it is highly flexible, configurable, and has a huge following for developing open source software to expand the usability of these devices.

Will you be picking up an MID for your next gadget, and will it be sporting Linux or maybe you already have one? Fill us in!