Original Iridium GO! Still a Better Deal Than Exec

There’s a headline to provoke screams and tearing of hair.

After all, the new Iridium GO! Exec is 40 times faster than the original GO! and only twice the price, so it’s gotta be the the better deal…right?

And you can get unlimited data with the original GO! from lots of places for $154.95/month and unlimited for the Exec from PredictWind for $169.95, just a $15/month difference.

So at this point you must be thinking that the old fart who runs this site has finally and completely slipped his cams when writing that headline.

Nope.

As so often in these things, the reason that GO! original is still a better deal than Exec is in the fine print.

Look at the screenshots at the top of this tip, and see if you can spot it.

You got it, with the original GO! unlimited plan you get unlimited data minutes for:

• Email
• Snapshots of any page on the internet: news, stock prices, whatever.
• Weather maps unavailable from PredictWind.
• Really vital weather information unavailable from PredictWind—more in an upcoming article.

Anything we want, any time we want, as much as we want.

Sure it’s slow, but so what, we don’t have to stand there and watch it, at least if we use decent software to run it.

We ran this business, including a ton of email, when out of cell phone range on the original GO! unlimited data plan, and downloaded a bunch of weather data, without ever needing to use more than an hour or so a day.

But with GO! Exec the “unlimited” is restricted to PredictWind data only!

Yup, the way I read it, after we buy the “unlimited” package for $169.95/month, we need to then add a data minutes package if we want anything other than stuff from PredictWind.

And it’s not even clear to me that we would be able to get our email under the “unlimited”.

So sounds to me like we are going to need to buy say 10MB (not going to go far) for another $40 if we want to venture out of the PredictWind world, and maybe even if we want our email within it.

And note they are charging data by the megabit, not connected time, so the much vaunted speed of Exec is not going to help.

Begs the question: when is unlimited, limited?

To make this worse, in their Exec FAQ, PredictWind claims that the unlimited package avoids “bill shock”. But what happens if you don’t buy an added data package, or do and go over it? Don’t know for sure, but I also don’t want to be the one to find out!

My Recommendations:

1. Stick with original Iridium GO! and the unlimited plan.
   • I know for sure that package is…unlimited. In several years of use for anything I wanted, including sending super-stupid grinning selfies to my daughter, there was not one single added invoice over and above the unlimited monthly charge.
2. If you really need a fast solution? Go Starlink as well.
   • Exec, even 40 times faster, is way too slow to actually do anything useful on the internet.
3. And if you need a solution to take into the liferaft, something Exec does do better than the original GO!, buy a secondhand Iridium handset.
   • There should be plenty around at good prices from people who bought limited unlimited.

Limited Unlimited?

One final thought:

It would be nice if Iridium and PredictWind would be a bit more careful with the word “unlimited”. On this page they specifically write “Unlimited Data”.

Look it up in the dictionary, guys. The way I read it, “unlimited” means without limits or restrictions. And “data” means all digital data, at least to me, not just that originating at PredictWind.

I just can’t see how you can be a little bit unlimited, or a little limited when you’re unlimited…OK, I’ll stop.

More on how we downloaded and analyzed the weather using the original GO!

This Online Book needs updating. It’s on my list for this winter. That said, the fundamentals are still relevant and can save you a lot of weather-related grief.