London, Wifi, or CyberCafe?

Prices seem hard to pin down, but it looks like the hotel we plan to
stay in, Kings Cross Holiday Inn Express, which shouts about its wifi
in all the ads charges £9/hr for it. ;(

Its making me question my whole plan of taking a laptop with us on our
two week trip, as opposed to stopping in some kind of cybercafe and
using the system they provide for a halff hour or so to check email and
skip any game playing plans etc.

I did some searching with jiwire.com, and found something called Bingo,
but despite the monthly charge most locations also had a per minute
charge, and weren't really located conveniently to our travel.

Any ideas, opinions, or suggestions?

See my thread from a few weeks ago on exactly this subject.

When I was in London I used the free WLAN at Foyles Bookshop -
it was good, in the cafe there on the 1st (or 2nd?) floor. There's a
surface at the window specially for laptops and you don't really
even have to have a coffee or anything if you don't want to.

Though I think it'd hardly be worth taking a laptop just to check
occassional email. Easy Everything is also pretty cheap for
that.

David


Danglerb wrote:
Prices seem hard to pin down, but it looks like the hotel we plan to
stay in, Kings Cross Holiday Inn Express, which shouts about its wifi
in all the ads charges £9/hr for it. ;(

Its making me question my whole plan of taking a laptop with us on our
two week trip, as opposed to stopping in some kind of cybercafe and
using the system they provide for a halff hour or so to check email and
skip any game playing plans etc.

I did some searching with jiwire.com, and found something called Bingo,
but despite the monthly charge most locations also had a per minute
charge, and weren't really located conveniently to our travel.

Any ideas, opinions, or suggestions?

Up to you what you want to use the computer for, but if it's simply to
check emails and websites and maybe upload digital photos to storage,
use an internet café - no need to lug a machine around with all its
paraphernalia, no need to worry about keeping it safe.

PJW

On 10 Jul 2006 04:25:22 -0700, "Danglerb" wrote:

Prices seem hard to pin down, but it looks like the hotel we plan to
stay in, Kings Cross Holiday Inn Express, which shouts about its wifi
in all the ads charges =A39/hr for it. ;(

Its making me question my whole plan of taking a laptop with us on our
two week trip, as opposed to stopping in some kind of cybercafe and
using the system they provide for a halff hour or so to check email and
skip any game playing plans etc.

I did some searching with jiwire.com, and found something called Bingo,
but despite the monthly charge most locations also had a per minute
charge, and weren't really located conveniently to our travel.

Any ideas, opinions, or suggestions?

We are all moderate net junkies, checking menus, shop hours and
locations, google earth, checking here to see about wifi, 3x many hour
a day habits all going cold turkey. Even if we do many many searches
before leaving and print them out, or stick them on the palm, we get
this disconnected feeling when we can't look for things we are used to.

I will be taking at least an old palm, M515, for games and books, but
its too old for wifi tricks I think. We will also be getting a new
laptop for our son to use this fall in school, so bumping the purchase
ahead a month and taking it with us seemed like a good option.

I will take a look at your thread.

Still really annoyed with Holiday Inn, L80 a night should have wifi
included.

Danglerb wrote:
We are all moderate net junkies, checking menus, shop hours and
locations, google earth, checking here to see about wifi, 3x many hour
a day habits all going cold turkey. Even if we do many many searches
before leaving and print them out, or stick them on the palm, we get
this disconnected feeling when we can't look for things we are used to.

Know the feeling :-)

I will be taking at least an old palm, M515, for games and books, but
its too old for wifi tricks I think. We will also be getting a new
laptop for our son to use this fall in school, so bumping the purchase
ahead a month and taking it with us seemed like a good option.

I have a cheapo PDA that I've upgraded to WLAN for travel with a WLAN
SD card; you need at least an SD (SDIO) or CF slot. It works well for
email, really light and compact and long battery life, screen a bit
small for surfing the net though. But of course there are other better
groups for technical stuff.


I will take a look at your thread.

Still really annoyed with Holiday Inn, L80 a night should have wifi
included.

Yeah, it ****es me off too when businesses like hotels and
restaurants expect *customers* to pay really high prices for WLAN.
The infrastructure costs are minimal for them. I was assuming
that you know sites like hotspot-locations.com where you can
search for well-known free hotspots?

David

David Johnstone wrote:
Danglerb wrote:
We are all moderate net junkies, checking menus, shop hours and
locations, google earth, checking here to see about wifi, 3x many hour
a day habits all going cold turkey. Even if we do many many searches
before leaving and print them out, or stick them on the palm, we get
this disconnected feeling when we can't look for things we are used to.

Know the feeling :-)

I will be taking at least an old palm, M515, for games and books, but
its too old for wifi tricks I think. We will also be getting a new
laptop for our son to use this fall in school, so bumping the purchase
ahead a month and taking it with us seemed like a good option.

I have a cheapo PDA that I've upgraded to WLAN for travel with a WLAN
SD card; you need at least an SD (SDIO) or CF slot. It works well for
email, really light and compact and long battery life, screen a bit
small for surfing the net though. But of course there are other better
groups for technical stuff.


I will take a look at your thread.

Still really annoyed with Holiday Inn, L80 a night should have wifi
included.

Yeah, it ****es me off too when businesses like hotels and
restaurants expect *customers* to pay really high prices for WLAN.
The infrastructure costs are minimal for them. I was assuming
that you know sites like hotspot-locations.com where you can
search for well-known free hotspots?

David

Just using Jiwire.com for now, will try the hotspot-locations.com

I have a Palm M515 I bought, and put in a new 1000 mah battery and 1 GB
SD card into, mostly just for this trip so my wife could leave her M515
at home. I wonder if getting a WiFi for it is practical?

In article .com,
"Danglerb" wrote:

Prices seem hard to pin down, but it looks like the hotel we plan to
stay in, Kings Cross Holiday Inn Express, which shouts about its wifi
in all the ads charges £9/hr for it. ;(

Its making me question my whole plan of taking a laptop with us on our
two week trip, as opposed to stopping in some kind of cybercafe and
using the system they provide for a halff hour or so to check email and
skip any game playing plans etc.

I did some searching with jiwire.com, and found something called Bingo,
but despite the monthly charge most locations also had a per minute
charge, and weren't really located conveniently to our travel.

Any ideas, opinions, or suggestions?

I just spent a week in London. Had taken a laptop to Paris the week
before where connectivity was part of the rent.

Olympia Hilton wanted 15 pounds a day or 75 pounds a week.

About a kilometer down the street is the Easy Internet on High Street
Kensington. Their posted rate is 15 pounds for the whole week IIRC.
However, that was for using their computers, not using your own laptop.
I'd used EasyInternet at Piazza Barberini in Rome for 35 euro for a
week, which let me use my laptop.

I couldn't find anyone there but looking around, there were no power
outlets, no ethernet connections. So I just assumed they didn't have an
easy way to support using your own laptop.

I got a good rate for the Hilton so I bit the bullet and did the one
week. Really useful using Frommers and TimeOut for things like
restaurant reviews or finding the closest Tescos or similar stores. Also
the TFL Journeyplanner site as well as checking weather.

I went to the British Library. Lots of people using their laptops, some
even connecting their laptops to the power plugs there. I just assumed
it was free Wifi there. But looking around at signs, it appears you
still need to subscribe to some service over there.

Well supposedly Paris is talking about doing a blanket wireless cloud on
the city as well as fiber connections.

Would like to see London do the same but who knows. Free museums but
really stiff hotel taxes, congestion charges and talk about additional
tourism taxes.

poldy wrote:

[]
I just spent a week in London. Had taken a laptop to Paris the week
before where connectivity was part of the rent.

Olympia Hilton wanted 15 pounds a day or 75 pounds a week.

About a kilometer down the street is the Easy Internet on High Street
Kensington. Their posted rate is 15 pounds for the whole week IIRC.
However, that was for using their computers, not using your own laptop.
I'd used EasyInternet at Piazza Barberini in Rome for 35 euro for a
week, which let me use my laptop.

I couldn't find anyone there but looking around, there were no power
outlets, no ethernet connections. So I just assumed they didn't have an
easy way to support using your own laptop.

I got a good rate for the Hilton so I bit the bullet and did the one
week. Really useful using Frommers and TimeOut for things like
restaurant reviews or finding the closest Tescos or similar stores. Also
the TFL Journeyplanner site as well as checking weather.

I went to the British Library. Lots of people using their laptops, some
even connecting their laptops to the power plugs there. I just assumed
it was free Wifi there. But looking around at signs, it appears you
still need to subscribe to some service over there.

Well supposedly Paris is talking about doing a blanket wireless cloud on
the city as well as fiber connections.

Would like to see London do the same but who knows.

Actually London is a bit further along already with this, but it won't
be free, and I'd bet it won't be free in Paris either.

Around 150 BT payphones in central London are now wifi points. The
combined area they cover is fairly impressive. That's in addition to the
hundreds of other BT openzones wifi points in London bars, stations etc.

This is happening in other cities across the UK.

As I'm on a subscription, it's very cheap for me. As a visitor, you'd
probably be stuck at the moment having to buy a £40 voucher, but that
would last a month, or 4,000 minutes, whichever comes first. For longer
term stays, that would be a good option. It's a pity that they don't
have a weekly subscription though- maybe one will come along. Generally,
I've found that the pricing for this is going down, not up.

Unless you've got very heavy use while aroad, you might find a
subscription in your home country is useful for roaming elsewhere. I did
this recently in the US, roaming with t-mobile on my BT susbcription.
This was convenient as it was available in my hotel, and many other
places. It cost 6p a minute, and even with a couple of hours usage
spread over three days, cost a lot less than taking out a daily
subscription.

I think I've posted here before that the apple store on Regent Street
has free wifi, and a few power points as well. The 'drawback' is that
you have to sit in the small theatre while people do presentations on
various apple software.

--
David Horne- http://www.davidhorne.net
usenet (at) davidhorne (dot) co (dot) uk
http://homepage.mac.com/davidhornecomposer http://soundjunction.org

Our trip costs spiraled way out of sight long ago, so I decided not to
let it bother me, just wave it in front of the wife when we get home
and I go shopping for a big screen display.

I am bidding away on ebay right now for a ultraportable PC (12"
screen), and when I wake up in a few hours I will be going after a
Tmobile phone that will work prepaid here in the US as well as the UK
with a sim transplant. The laptop will have Skype on it, so we can call
home free with a wifi, and hopefully call whichever of us is carrying
the Tmobile.

I just bought a wall AC USB charger that claims to wiggle its prongs
and be happy in US or UK sockets, and that will keep my Palm going.
Looks like all I need on the PC is a UK IEC power cord, or one of those
adapters that don't change the voltage.

Thanks for all the help.

In article 1him2c9.xhtzf3w9m4c1N%this_address_is_for_spam@ya hoo.com,
(David Horne, _the_ chancellor of
the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco 24h offy) wrote:

Around 150 BT payphones in central London are now wifi points. The
combined area they cover is fairly impressive. That's in addition to the
hundreds of other BT openzones wifi points in London bars, stations etc.


Actually, I saw a bunch of booths which appears to have a terminal with
keyboard and screen. Didn't really look at what they charge but you're
in a glass booth in the middle of the street.

I think I've posted here before that the apple store on Regent Street
has free wifi, and a few power points as well. The 'drawback' is that
you have to sit in the small theatre while people do presentations on
various apple software.

Yes found that by chance. The building looks nice with a little
dome-like roof.

There were 3 or 4 dozen people using the laptops and computers. Few
actually in queue to pay for purchases.