Definitely sounds a good thing. Just so you know the best you can expect from most wireless set ups would only let you get the signal if you're really close, maybe next door or next door but one if you're on the right side of the hotel and lucky. Definitely worth a try though.

You'll also find lots of McDonalds have free wi fi too, though that isn't necessarily an ideal laptop environment. I imagine one of those Asus EEE things would be ideal, it's what they call an ultra mobile being somewhere between a laptop and a PDA. It's about

Well this is pretty cool. I'm sitting on the train, just departing Darlington station writing this post. The connections a trifle slow compared to my broardband, so I won't be doing any uba downloading, but stil it's rather fun imho!

the mild annoyence is the first thing that popped up was a promo for national express train service where they ask for your mail address so that they can send you spam, but I ticked the "don't spam me" box and now seem to have free access with no trouble. I do have to say, that sitting here, with my busted desktop in a huge box to my left being taken back to Nottingham for repairs, my massive overnight bag, and my laptop perched on a train table, in a cariage which is air conditioned to the point of being a refrigerator, being hastled to buy over expensive train refreshments as the summery ghreen countryside and blue sky go past is a very new and intreaguing experience,  ----- and one I rather like!

Dark, Did you have to enter your email address thing when you were on the train? Just curious. Also does anyone know anything about what the public Wifi networks are like in the US? I've never really taken my laptop to a cafe or on a train, so I don't know, but it'd be interesting to find out since I'll probably be getting a wireless card for my BN soon, not to mention a load of new equipment next year for college.

wow, mcdonalds and wi-fi, though I wouldn't say a mcdonald is a good environment for a laptop, imagine eating a chicken burger, drinking coke, and browsing the web watching an awesome video on you tube.
you begin to laugh without control, and a piece of the burger falls out of your mouth, straight on to the keyboard.
you forget about the coke, attempt to pick the burger up still laughing, and release the cup. the laptop receives an unplezent shower consisting of coke.
I tell you, coke on a laptop is like your self jumping off a tall building.
I had that problem, thanks to my mum, my friend and my sister, we made all sorts of stuff to dry the laptop up as fast as possible. otherwise, the coke would get to inside, and damage the mechanics, rendering the laptop useless
o and, same applies to cofee, as deadly as coke.
my dad had a laptop, damaged by coffee. first, the fans kicked for 1 second, then nothing.
after some checking, we've foundd out that many parts wer damaged, rendering the laptop useless.
well returning to the mcdonald story,
the laptop is wed, and you have no possibility of drying it.
you left it like this, and when you return,
click, click, click,
"O my god! my laptop is down"
this was an example.

for wifi, I had no luck, totally.
I had some networks protected by keys, and others simply failed permanently.
I have a rooter at home in poland though, and I use it to get my connection. it works.

Hi guys,

About WiFi in public areas, we were going to a gas station to fill the car up and I found like 5 networks. XStationName1, XStationName2, where XStationName was the name of the station, dunno what it was. SO they're also in gas stations, fast food places, hotels, you get the idea.

Oh BTW, I have a BraillePlus, so as an experiment, I turned on wireless and let it tell me the networks and their signal strength and security level. I took down the stats:

Twenty-five networks were open
Fifteen networks had WEP
Five networks had WPA

Keep in mind this is only from one town to the next--and proves that people need to secure their wireless networks!

well, the hotel where I stayed last year had an unsecured wireless network with no password ----- I could always just take a deckchair outside that hotel and pinch it, lol!

My home hub, and the one I'm on now at my parents' are of course password protected, ---- see the other topic about the fun I had trying to get my password out of Bt (that's the company British Telecom for those who don't know).

The train network was unsecured, however when you first opened Ie you got a page appear which required you to enter an e-mail address to logue on. also on that page though was some quite interesting info such as route planning and train times, ------ which could actually be handy to know about in future.

From my conversation on this subject with Bt, the way things work is that the big net companies such as yahoo own the actual networks, and various people from restaurant owners to mobile phone providers pay to use them. apparently when i logue on to such a network, i'll have to select the provider I'm going through on a list, which will also determine the payment plan.

Luckily for me, Bt provide a service covered by my hub wrental costs called bt open zone, and apparently if I select that from the list and enter my private Bt address and password it'll be free, ---- or rather it'll be covered by the money Bt have already had out of me.

as for coffee and laptops, well in secondary school, I did have a very nasty accident with a flask of coffee and my old laptop. Luckily when it was taken to bits and dried out, it turned out only 9 K had been deleted. the contacts on the keyboard were shot so that had to be replaced, but once that was done everything worked fine, ---- and continued to do so for the next couple of years. i actually never discovered what 9 k had been deleted, so it was obviously very unimportant.

for Cafes and things, well I've used a laptop in the students union and library cafes before. So long as i find an out of the way table things are usually fine, ---- though of course I'd nver actually pull my laptop out until I'd finished drinking the coffee, ---- or if i wished to drink coffee at the same time, put the cup on the ground betwene my feet or on another table, and of course eating a burger or whatever would just be plain stupid.

as for standing out, ---- well realistically what does that matter, unless your in a really dire neighborhood and okely to be mugged or something if carrying a laptop. Besides, I've seen people with laptops frequently, ---- especially on trains.

I actually find a bustling environment like a cafe or a train quite good for creative writing in.

Sounds like that ISP likely had high power access points scattered around, I've heard of such things being trialled. Putting access points in some street lamps was one interesting idea.

Even better they are looking at forms of wireless that can cover a city sized area without having to go through the mobile phone networks...

Though I've looked at the Three web site here in the UK and their mobile broadband deals seem interesting, with them offering a USB adapter on either pay as you go or low cost contracts in the multiple gigs per month range.

I'm never sure about the pay as you go model, especially sinse I like to do things online such as listen to audio dramas or play games like Sryth, rather than just pop in and check E-mail.

I was actually quite surprised how reasonable Bt's deal is as far as net access goes, ---- though i do pay a fair amount per month on it. saying that though, i get full access with no download limits for as many computers as I wish to connect to the hub (thus far I've used my laptop wirelessly and my desktop with wire), pluss a land line which is free at evenings and weekends, pluss a skype phone which is free to ring any uk land line for as long as I like. it's about

sounds like a good deal, i like the anywhere in the world thing. It costs me to ring mobiles, ---- but then again I've got 900 free minutes on my mobile anyway.

Even my friend, who not only has his own site and does huge amounts of music related things on the net, --- pluss work, pluss playing games like ultima online, has never fallen fowl of bandwidth issues. I really only had the unlimited because it turned out that if I had unlimited bandwidth, it also came with unlimited landline calls on my skype phone, where as unlimited landline calls on my ordinary phone would cost quite a bit more.

At home, my parents have the same deal, and the network gets incredibly used with two desktops, my laptop, my brother's wii and his Ds, ---- and soon his new laptop which he's bought for work all connected or accessing things wirelessly, but we stil haven't hit any limits as yet.

Oh btw Cx2, tomorrow I'm off to buxton for the festival. If I'm really lucky, the hotel will have net access. If I'm slightly lucky, I will get the wireless network working at cafe nero just around the corner. If I'm amazingly unlucky, none of these will work, so I'll appologise in advance for probable vanishment, --- though hopefully I shouldn't vanish.

Well I would say even with torrents, as long as you keep it to a reasonable level it should be okay, ---- but someone is always going to be unreasonable at some point it seems.

my friend who does the music thing does a heck of a lot of streaming and downloading, not to mention uploading sinse he's also a Dj for his music site, , and that's aside from his playing of ultima, but I suppose there are weerd people out there who spend all their days downloading random stuff.

As I said, hopefully the warning will be unnecessary, I'm jjust trying to cover all eventualities.

To me, you are just asking for it when you do that much in one go, but that's a whole nother subject. LOL.