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#1
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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? |
#2
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London, Wifi, or CyberCafe?
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? |
#3
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London, Wifi, or CyberCafe?
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? |
#4
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London, Wifi, or CyberCafe?
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. |
#5
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London, Wifi, or CyberCafe?
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 |
#6
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London, Wifi, or CyberCafe?
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? |
#7
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London, Wifi, or CyberCafe?
Kinetic wrote:
The cheapest wifi provider I know is FON (http://en.fon.com/) FON charges â˘3 / day for unlimited download - probably the cheapest rate in the whole of the UK Unfourtunately they are very new on the market and coverage is still patchy I wonder if FON doesn't violate users' agreements with their broadband providers, at least in the UK. -- David Horne- http://www.davidhorne.net usenet (at) davidhorne (dot) co (dot) uk http://homepage.mac.com/davidhornecomposer http://soundjunction.org |
#8
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London, Wifi, or CyberCafe?
I wonder if FON doesn't violate users' agreements with their broadband providers, at least in the UK. It depends on the provider. For example: *FON fully permitted: the phone cooperative *FON only permitted in linus mode (not bill): bulldog, bethere *FON prohibited: virgin.net In any case, even if the user has intalled FON in violation of his/her provider's agreement, as a paying client you're not liable for that violation, the owner of the hotspot is. So no need to worry. |
#9
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London, Wifi, or CyberCafe?
Adding a wifi sdio card to the M515 is nuts, cards start at $50, and
other PDAs with builtin wifi aren't much more on ebay. Since I also would like a phone with me the HP ipaq 6315 is kind of tempting, pop in a sim for UK, and pop in a different one for USA when I get home. I'm still learning sim, but looks like it works. FON? I just read about an offer from them, $5 + I think $8 S&H for a wifi router, but you have to agree to leave the connection open for a year to people who register at fon. I thought the access was free, maybe its free if you put out a wifi spot of your own? Remember that to become a FONERO and connect for free to any access point within the FON Community worldwide, you will need a FON Social Router. What is a FON Social Router? It is a WiFi router with FON's software inside. It allows you to have WiFi access from home but also let's you communicate with other members of the largest WiFi community in the world. You share your WiFi connection in a safe and secure manner, and you show all the other FONEROS where you are located on the FON Maps. In exchange, you may connect to any FON access point around the world without paying a dime. |
#10
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London, Wifi, or CyberCafe?
Danglerb wrote:
Adding a wifi sdio card to the M515 is nuts, cards start at $50, and other PDAs with builtin wifi aren't much more on ebay. Really? I hadn't realised that built-in WLAN PDA's were so cheap. In that case you are right. If you're talking about used devices though of course you have to remember (as with laptops) that the rechargable battery of suchlike is the weak point. Remember that to become a FONERO and connect for free to any access point within the FON Community worldwide, you will need a FON Social Router. What is a FON Social Router? It is a WiFi router with FON's software inside. It allows you to have WiFi access from home but also let's you communicate with other members of the largest WiFi community in the world. You share your WiFi connection in a safe and secure manner, and you show all the other FONEROS where you are located on the FON Maps. In exchange, you may connect to any FON access point around the world without paying a dime. It's certainly an interesting idea. If you live on the 10th floor you're also not likely to have many users though! What would worry me a little is the legal aspect. I don't mean violation of ISP conditions, but what happens if your users do something illegal in internet, such as posting defamatory comments in forums or up/downloading copyrighted material. In many countries it's a simple matter (legally) to trace the offence back to the IP address and hence the "fonero". Then you would have to explain that you just opened your network to all these nice people... David |
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