John Navas <spamfilter1@navasgroup.com> wrote in
news:q9i0e6pci7p3ve3klbrv524eamef3c31d4@4ax.com:

>>The free hotel or restaurant wifi will go full speed one to 10 times
>>faster than this all month for free....my point exactly.
>
> Except you've got to sit there the entire time; speeds are frequently
> crappy, much slower than my cellular data; service is often unreliable
> (completely down in my local Starbucks the past few days); lots of
> places without free Wi-Fi; etc, etc. Doesn't look like a terribly
> attractive alternative to cellular data to me, but as always, YMMV.
>

Maybe this is true in Californicate, but not in Charleston. That WAS
true when I had the ****** little 20mw wifi radio into its embedded
crappy antenna behind the LCD panel in all that radio noise the netbook
makes....BUT, the new 2 watt beast stuck to the window next to my table
sure put a stop to it! Wifi at Waffle House from the hotels hundreds of
yards away, now run as fast as is delivered at most homes by DSL or
cable. All videos/TV/radio/games/etc., run at FULL SPEED without the
sellphone crap balking and jerky nonsense running out of data.

I've got to "sit there the entire time", anyway, because I cannot afford
a chauffeur to drive the Smart car underway. This lame excuse to justify
sellular data expenses is crazy. You shouldn't be using data underway.

As to your last observation, sitting in my fav Waffle House with the
boys, I used to have spotty service from Red Roof Inn across the street
on the netbook...just 2 connections on the display. Last night, we
counted 37 wifi hotspots with the Alfa adapter and its REAL 5.5dbi
antenna stuck to the window above our heads on USB. Of those, there were
16 I could choose from that were accessible and working, with 8 I'd call
very good connections to choose from. If Starbucks were down, I'd simply
connect to something across the parking lot at one of the other
establishments with free wifi, NOT an option on your smartphone or
laptop's little 20mw peanut whistle with a piece of PC board trace for an
antenna behind the display in all that noise. John, it's simply amazing
what it can see AND COMMUNICATE WITH using all this RF power!

Spend $32 and give it a try if you have a USB port its driver software
can be installed on. It's a giant step ahead for wifi connectivity.

(PS - Ramada Inn's password is "guest".