Using personal Laptop in internet cafes?

[collegeplayer1]

I often see people in internet cafes using their own laptops. Can someone direct me to a site that provides genral information on this type of thing? What software is needed for the laptop? How does it detect the various internet services provided in each cafe? Thanks...

[collegeplayer1]

does it exist? that would be cool...

[MicroBob]

You just need a wireless card that you can pick-up at a computer fix-it shop for $80 or so.
If your laptop is new it should likely already come with wireless capabilities.


I don't know much about it but it's pretty easy (as long as my computer isn't acting weird).
Just turn on your computer and the card connects to the wirless-internet signal.
I can log it via AOL or whatever if I want....or it will just directly connect to whatever internet-explorer page I want to access.

There's an internet-coffee place down the street from my abode and I head down there a couple times a week. Sit on their patio and watch traffic (automotive and people variety) go by while multi-tabling with an iced-latte or whatever. Pretty nice change of pace from sitting at home clicking away for several hours.

This is really basic stuff as I'm terrible with computers. but you really don't have to know more than I do to connect wirelessly.
You could probably ask someone who's on their computer if you wanted.

Most of the Dell laptops have wireless cards already in them. I think the HP's and other brands do as well. If you already have a laptop you should be able to get a card for it.

[MicroBob]

I saw on the CNN-ticker at the bottom a few weeks ago that Philadelphia city-council is exploring the possibility of spending $150-mil or so to set up wireless internet access throughout the entire city. This would probably take awhile for them to set-up but would be kind of cool if they did.
Might become the wave of the future for other cities.

As it stands now....wireless internet signals don't travel terribly far. you can get it throughout your house fairly easily but much farther than that is tough.

At the internet-coffee place I go to...the patio is in the front and the wireless set-up/antenna or whatever it is is in the back. I barely get an acceptable signal from the front of the building.

[Alobar]

you just need a wireless card in your laptop, and most likely a hotspot account. Hotspot is a verizon service where tens of thousands of places across the US (coffe shops, airports, etc) have wireless access. $29/month for the account.

[1800GAMBLER]

Since you are referring to thailand internet cafes and not american it's not wireless. You just need a network card in your laptop, which you will have.

[Blarg]

Many internet providers also provide Wi-Fi service for an extra cost. Usually you can get a flat rate deal to use as much as you want, but prices vary dramatically. It's still a fairly new market so there are still vendors trying to get a price premium off the unwary. Look around. You don't have to get Wi-Fi from whoever you're getting your net access from now.

There are also services like Boingo and T-Mobile that provide Wi-Fi service. What they do is specialize in the Wi-Fi that regular ISP's are now starting to add into their service line. They buy up the rights to Wi-Fi in certain buildings, or help establish a Wi-Fi presence there in coordination with building and store management, and bundle that coverage building by building into a Wi-Fi presence in a city that they then send to you. Just like with the big vendors, they compete with each other to get the juicy spots, and coverage is quirky. This is because Wi-Fi coverage is very short-range. You might get it to work fine in a building, but the quality likely will rapidly drop off even in a single building, and once you talk about covering the block, you're pretty much out of luck. And there are millions of blocks in some cities.

These services charge for access by the hour, by the day, or have a flat fee for unlimited useage per month. Monthly fees generally go from 20 to 30-ish bucks, and daily use can be as high as 10; hourly can be much more expensive still.

Check out jwrie.com and www.wifinder.com for a listing of the major wi-fi providers, along with some reviews on coverage at certain spots, etc. You'll see that some spots in your city that you would expect to be well-covered probably aren't -- everything's still spotty at this early stage in almost every American city.

Some spots reliably have coverage, because they've made a deal with certain providers, and some enterprises find it necessary to provide their customers with Wi-Fi, like colleges and hotels. For instance, Marriott hotels are all wired for Wi-Fi and Starbucks coffee shops have a deal with T-Mobile, so you can always go there and pay up a big rate for the day or hour, or just get a T-Mobile monthly contract if it's worth it for you.

It's a bit of a pain and complicated, because it's like trying to make a phone call not like we do it now, but as if there were dozens of phone companies and you had to pay all of them if you wanted to just walk up to a phone booth anywhere and use it. And, there's not even that much coverage in many places.

It's pretty chaotic now, so the freedom of roaming around with your laptop and using Wi-Fi is actually pretty limited, but with any luck you'll be in a city where that's not a problem. Some towns and shopping centers are even starting to put in free or subscription wi-fi covering broad areas, so wi-fi penetration is slowly getting less expensive and more common. The increasing competition and decreasing cost of setting up new wi-fi networks is helping make things more consumer-friendly, but for many people it won't be easy to find wi-fi for a reasonable rate in all the places they want to go for quite a while to come. The fantasy of easily being able to go play online poker on the beach or anywhere you'd like is still a very distant prospect.

[InchoateHand]

At COMPUSA you can get the old wireless protocol ("b") receiver for $9.99 after rebate. There is both a USB and a PCMCI version.

[MicroBob]

interesting stuff.

as i've said before, I don't have any of the subscription services like boingo or t-mobil. i just have a regular wireless card and I really don't have too much trouble finding internet-access from place to place...but i don't hang out too much at starbucks either (where i would have to pay for it).


I suspect this varies from city to city....but I would think most cities with a decent-sized university would have some sort of free-internet, non-franchised, coffee-place available.

I agree with blarg that it will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

[InchoateHand]

Here in Ann Arbor, even the gas station attached to the Meijer supermarket has free wifi. Most of the buildings on the UM campus have free wifi, and from my house I can pick up seven distinct signals, of varying strength, three of them open networks.

The future of this is when ISPs and their later generation replacement start charging for bandwidth used as opposed to simple connectivity. That could dramatically alter wifi's utility, though its anyones' guess how that will occur. (And a lot of people are guessing right now with their wallets/stocks).