On the Road Internet

When traveling with a laptop, high speed Internet connectivity for a laptop is a must. Connectivity to a printer is outstanding because you can printout the airline boarding passes 24 hours before your flight. Most hotels today have high speed Internet connectivity capability and some are no longer adding the $10 per day to your room charge for it.

In Jackson Mississippi I recently trained Information Technology personnel at the State of Mississippi on Telecommunications. The two hotels in downtown Jackson where I could stay both had free high speed Internet access, provided you brought along your own Ethernet cable to connect to the high speed modem. When I connected to the Internet in the hotel, it stated that a charge would be added to my room charge for Internet access. However, no added charge was on the bill. The other hotel I queried said that they had high speed access, but if you did not bring a cable you would need to purchase one for $10.

This differs sharply from our experience in the aftermath of 2003's hurricane Isabel. We booked a local suites hotel because we had no power for five days. My surrogate autistic grandson Paddy lives on TV and Internet access. After a day without both he was highly stressed. I thought that in the suites hotel he could reduce his stress by watching TV and surfing the web with high speed Internet access. The hotel had power, adult TV only, and no high speed Internet. Fortunately, Paddy was so desperate that he watched the weather channel and was satisfied with dial-up Internet access from a laptop. What a difference two years makes.

More importantly there are many WIFI hot spots providing high speed Internet access for wireless laptops. A WIFI hot spot is setup when some business has high speed Internet connectivity using Telephone Company DSL or Cable TV Company Cable modem and a Wireless Access Point (WAP). The WAP box can be purchased for under $100 from any local electronics store. Often business charge to use their hot spot. However, many cities have free hot spots. In Columbia the www.jiwire.com site lists two libraries, Life Time Fitness, and Panera Bread at the mall as providing free WIFI access. Strange that a popular nationwide coffee chain is not listed? For what you pay for a cup of their coffee, WIFI access should be gratis. There are about twenty hot spots total in Columbia but most charge for use.

Both jiwire.com and metrofreefi.com find free hot spots in cities around the USA and elsewhere. Metrofreefi.com gives a map and lists one more free spot Frisco Burrito than does jiwire.com. Searching by city and state does the job. Except my hometown of Elmira, NY was not found by metrofreefi.com but several non-free spots were listed by jiwire.com. Elmira is a small town in upstate New York so what would one expect. Interestingly, many MacDonalds are listed as having non-free WIFI access.

The ultimate in mobile Internet access is Verizon's wireless broadband service. It runs about $60 per month and acts like a cell phone modem on steroids for your PC. The speed and universal access are both good. With all wireless connectivity, there are dead spots. In spite of Verizon's “Can you hear me now?” guy, the answer many times is “No, I can not hear you now!” So you move to a new “not dead” spot. However, the benefit of this service is that is truly mobile.

In a few years all this and more will come to any cell phone. The cell phone is fast becoming our universal information appliance. The thought of leaving it someplace accidentally is frightening because at my age I leave everything everywhere. I would leave my head someplace if it weren't attached. Of course the cell phone will have password security, if only I could remember the password. Biometric security on the cell phone to the rescue. Life and technology go on.