Panera works great--and it's free!
Well, I went to the new Panera at Southgate here in Colorado Springs this past Monday. They had a sign in the window that read, "Free Wi-Fi!" and I had my laptop in my briefcase. However, when I ordered my toasted cinnamon-crunch bagel, as I asked the nice lady if the free Wi-Fi was working yet.
"I don't think so. Now, what is that again?"
I explained it to her and she said she'd never heard of it before. I shrugged, took my bagel, and grabbed a table. Cracked open the X21 and...nothing. Oh, well. Probably still getting the bugs out of it.
Then it hit me: Whoops! I had all networking protocols disabled after Saturday's wardrive. So I re-enabled TCP/IP and rebooted. As soon as I did, it autoconnected, showed me a policy screen, and I was in. Wasn't super fast--DSLReports tagged it as 800 Kbps downlink--but fast enough to be useful.
I was impressed enough to move our Delphi Meetup to Panera from Pike's Perk downtown, which has wireless but it costs.
The two new Paneras in the Springs both have free Wi-Fi, as does an older one in Niles, Illinois, where my mother-in-law lives. It looks like they are rolling out free hotspots in as many of their stores as they can. If there's a Panera anywhere near you, a quick wardrive past the front door should tell you--and you can legally connect to this one!
--73--
--Novilio
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