On 25 Feb 2004 at 11:01, Kenneth Crudup wrote: > Pros: Starbucks (especially)/Kinkos/Borders are everywhere.
Some Starbucks don't have WiFi. I recently drove from L.A. to Maine and back, and I think it was Indiana where the Starbucks didn't have WiFi. Other states or cities probably don't have it either; since it was unusable to me I didn't conduct a survey of each state. My WiFi provider was Boingo, which I've since dropped. I never go to Starbucks myself, but I've read at least one report that they have a 'get your coffee and get out' mentality. Concerning Boingo: - the only Boingo location listed in Maine was in Saco. Good for summer visitors, not good for people who are going to the larger cities. It was in a private home, it was raining, I couldn't get a signal from the curb, and I discarded the idea of asking to drive up their driveway or sit on their front porch. - their location in Bloomington IL was in an apartment complex. The only signal I got there was one called 'fuckyou', and the apt. complex office was closed. - the most out of the way Boingo location was in Alpine TX. That's 70 miles south of the 10 away out in western TX. The only thing south of Alpine is Big Bend National Park, so Alpine is slightly saved from being on the edge of nowhere. It was also located in a trailer park. - the Boingo "location" in Manchester's port city (memory fails me) was in a hotel, and they told me it was only available to hotel guests. As previously reported, so did the kind folks at the Safari Inn/Anabelle Hotel in Burbank CA. - most of Boingo's Chicago locations were clustered in the Loop, and some of the Cosi locations with the signals were closed on weekends.
