So I flew home from Oklahoma to Manchester, New Hampshire yesterday... and on my flight from Atlanta to Manchester, NH, I decided to connect to the Delta Airlines Gogo wifi that they turn on after they reach greater than 10,000 feet elevation. I figured I'd connect to it from my netbook. Sadly they seem to have a OS requirement to connect to their wifi, which is stupid.

I turned the netbook on and because it has a SSD was quickly at my desktop of Windows XP Home SP3. I then connected to the unsecured wifi that was the only wifi on the plane. I launched Firefox which is running the latest version 32 and was brought to the Delta home page.

When selecting to get a free wifi connection vs paying $5 for 30 minutes of internet access or $14 for 2 hours ( or something like that ) with options going all the way up to like $449 for unlimited access for a year.  I was then presented with a message on the next page when trying to SELECT a sponsor to select for advertising to pay my way for internet access with " Sorry your computer does not match the following requirements"

It listed Mac OS VERSIONS,  and Windows versions 7, 8, 8.1 as a requirement as well as listed browser requirements in which Firefox, CHROME, and IE were listed.

To me it was like why have an OS requirement since if you have the latest Firefox which is what I use for my browser that should be the only requirement to support the scripting etc that their web page and advertising junk need to operate.

There was no requirement to install any software to SURF, but because my netbook was Windows XP with Firefox and not Windows 7 or newer with Firefox it wasnt allowed to do anything on their network.

Just thinking of the others out there who might have a portable Linux computer or XP or Vista instead of 7 or newer for OS or older Mac OS that supports the latest browser of choice that meets the requirements for the browser, but yet is not a match for OS requirement... Its just stupid.

Anyone know "why" they would have an OS version requirement to connect to their free or paid for wifi when the browser is a match to the requirements, and should be the only requirement is that the browser be a specific version or newer?That does seem pretty ridiculous.  I can possibly see them wanting to block unsupported OSs for security but Vista is still supported.  Not only that, but if the network is set up properly then this shouldn't be an issue as individual clients should be isolated from ONE another.  I also wonder what would happen with not only Linux, but devices running iOS and Android!

Was this only on the advertising supported version?  I'm wondering if in order for the advertising to work you need to install special software on your PC that will display the ads.  Of course this is a wild guess but this sounds like a possible reason. Quote

Anyone know "why" they would have an OS version requirement to connect to their free or paid for wifi when the browser is a match to the requirements, and should be the only requirement is that the browser be a specific version or newer?

With the appropriate add-in you can always change your user-agent to report a supported OS. I doubt they have much reason to actually have it set.