Like one of those brave chimpanzees NASA sent to space before humans, CNET's Caroline McCarthy today took to the heavens aboard the inaugural flight of "BetaBlue," JetBlue's new onboard Wi-Fi service. It's supposed to allow passengers access to email and IM via their BlackBerrys and Yahoo accounts.

But, according to McCarthy's account — "It all reminded me of an ultra-low-end mobile browser" — the service failed to meet even our modest expectations for it, crashing at least twice during the intrepid reporter's journey.

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