Local Area Free WiFi Hotspots

[thinkingaxim]

Would like to know if anyone has found free WiFi in their area. I live in Atlanta and an independent coffee shop, Chocolate Coffee, offers both wired and wireless free. Love it.

I travel quite a bit and want to avoid the $$$ of Starbucks (Coffee and connections) in other cities if possible.

Other posts have asked about connecting, I set the SSID to "any" on the laptop wifi card and it seem to pick up everything.

Also, if in Atlanta, check out www.atlantafreenet.org. Has a list and maps of public APs.

Ordered the Ax yesterday, can't wait.

Thanks!

[mattf]

Careful connecting to open APs - technically, if it ain't a freenet, it's theft of service.

That said, I finf http://www.wifimaps.com and http://www.wigle.net invaluable.

Thanks for the ATL site - I fly through there regularly.

[Emonair]

I was talking with a friend about this the other day. Apparently many places offer wifi for like $10 an hour or something. How do they keep track of this? Does anyone know? Or are most of the people who use it just surfing for free and don't volunteer to pay for it?

[mattf]

Originally posted by Emonair
I was talking with a friend about this the other day. Apparently many places offer wifi for like $10 an hour or something. How do they keep track of this? Does anyone know? Or are most of the people who use it just surfing for free and don't volunteer to pay for it?

Dunno about pay sites, but a lot of the freenetwork folks (myself included) used nocatauth http://nocat.net/ - I would imagine the pay palces use something similar....

m-

[jda5id]

Austin, Texas has a number of small shops that offer free wifi. Probably the most widespread free wifi in the area is the Schlotzskys deli chain. They are a fairly large chain headquartered here in Austin with locations throughout the US. All of their Austin locations have free wifi access and their website mentions that some in Atlanta and Houston do as well. http://www.schlotzskys.com/wireless.html

Another place that offers it is a local group of movie theatres, the Alamo Drafthouse. They are a fantastic place to see a movie because they have a full menu (including beer and wine) and waitstaff service at your table. They sell out many of their shows and you often need to be there 45 minutes ahead of time so it can help kill some time before the movie starts.

Actually just ate lunch at Schlotzskys this afternoon and brought the Axim along. They had a fairly long registration process with 15-20 questions you had to answer, but after that it was great.

[cybermage]

I've found that most CompUSA stores have unencrypted WiFi in their stores for demo use...

Makes it nice for looking up reviews or prices online while browsing.

[cebrooks]

Just some BS information......

I was chatting via ICQ with my Pop last night and he was in a schlotzskys in Austin and love'n it.

[Racer X]

Bump. Good tips here. Thanks guys.

[jy630]

I'm new to PDAs and wireless connections and had a question. If I get the wirless CF card for the Axim, can I connect to any wireless area without having to configure anything. For instance, I'm at a university where wireless is all over, I need my university id to access their wireless which isn't an issue, but what I need to know is whether it is plug and play so to speak? Will it find a network and connect if it can?

[falgun]

also here is a site where you just enter your state and city and shows local places check it out: http://www.80211hotspots.com/

[Desibhai]

Falgun, I guess that includes people posting also ;-)

Anyway, thanks for the link. Helps a lot when you are travelling.