An Eclectic Mind

I’m pleasantly surprised to find WiFi in unusual places.

I’m just finishing up a 6-day trip in northern Arizona. As usual, I brought my old 12″ PowerBook along to keep me connected. It has a built-in AirPort wireless card and can also connect to the Internet via Bluetooth with my Treo where Internet service is available on my wireless network.

I’m pleased to report that I had access to the Internet on every stop of this trip:

• Sedona. We stayed at the Sky Ranch Lodge on Airport Mesa. I had a Garden View room. I’m not sure if the WiFi connection was available throughout the property or if I just got it because I was relatively close to the main office. I don’t recall seeing it advertised anywhere. So I was very surprised to get a nice strong signal from my room.
• Grand Canyon. I stayed at Bright Angel Lodge. While there wasn’t WiFi available there, my cellphone service was able to get Internet access, which I could then share with my PowerBook. So although the connection wasn’t fast and it required pinging to keep alive, it was available.
• Lake Powell. We stayed at the Lake Powell Resort northwest of Page. Although there was WiFi in the lodge lobby, it didn’t extend out to my room, which was two buildings away. Again, the Treo came to the rescue and I was able to get online.
• Monument Valley. We stayed at Gouldings Lodge. While I know my Treo can’t connect to the Internet there, my room was sufficiently close enough to the main lobby to connect to one of the lodge’s two WiFi hotspots. (I’m not sure, but I think the folks at Red Bull may have added the second hotspot when they were there in May for the air races. They were responsible for getting the cell tower put up nearby.)
• Flagstaff. I stayed at the Radisson on the west side of town. WiFi is a standard feature in its rooms.

In each case where the hotel provided WiFi access, access was free. I didn’t even have to log on to a service and agree to usage terms. I just opened my PowerBook and waited a moment. A dialog told me that none of my trusted networks were available and offered to connect me with another network.

Paying Extra for WiFi?

I am surprised, however, at the number of high-priced hotels that are charging a fee for WiFi access. It’s interesting to me that lower budget hotels give away WiFi access but you can expect to pay $5 to $10 per day for the same access in a Hyatt or Marriott or Hilton — each of which tend to be more costly than an average hotel chain.

I’ve also come to the point where the availability of free WiFi in a hotel’s rooms weighs into my booking decision. For example, if faced with two hotels that have the same rate, I’ll go with the one that has free Wi-Fi, even if it doesn’t have popular amenities such as in-room coffee, free breakfast, or a fitness room. A fast, reliable Internet connection is more important to me than many other hotel features.

What Do You Think?

What do you think about WiFi access when you travel? Here’s a quick poll. Don’t be afraid to use the Comments link or form at the bottom of this post to share your thoughts.

Tell us which iPod you’d buy.

On Wednesday, Steve Jobs announced four new iPod models, available in plenty of time for the holidays. They range from a restyling of the very basic iPod Shuffle to an improved iPod Nano to a renamed, increased capacity iPod Classic to a wifi-enabled, browser equipped iPod Touch.

Not to miss out on an opportunity to gather opinions, I’ve set up the following poll:

Keep in mind that this poll does not ask which iPod you will buy. It asks which one you would buy.

And I hope you’ll take the time to use the Comments link or form below to let us know why you’ve made your choice.

Should they stay or should they go?

A feed subscriber has indicated that he’s not too fond of the “Twitter Updates” posts that are posted automatically each night by Twitter Tools. He’d like to see them off the feed.

But if people want them off the feed, they probably also want them off the site. So that’s the question for this newest poll.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about and would like to vote, please look at some examples first.

Use the Comments link or form below if you like. Try not to be too cruel.

6-Sep-07 Update:
I turned the Twitter Updates post feature off over the weekend.

Today, I downloaded and installed the Ultimate Category Excluder plugin and set it up to keep the Twiiter Updates posts off the Home page and out of the feeds. So I turned the Twitter Updates Post feature back on. With luck, they should not appear in feeds or on the Home page. But they’ll continued to be archived to this blog, primarily for my own journaling purposes. Thanks everyone for the feedback. I’m closing the poll down now.

12-Dec-07 Update:
I decided to kill the Twitter Update posts completely. Not only did I disable the plugin’s features, but I deleted all the update posts from the system.

What new feature are you most excited about?

Now that the iPhone hype has died down, serious Mac users can turn their attention, hopes, and dreams to Mac OS X development. That means Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which is due to be released sometime in October.

By this time, most Mac users have a good idea of the features in store for them in Leopard. If you don’t you can see demos of the features on the Apple Web site’s Leopard Features page. If you have time and want to participate in the poll, I highly recommend you brush up on what’s going to “transform your Mac.”

As the author of Mac OS books and how-to articles, I’m naturally curious about what has other Mac users most excited about Leopard. I want to make sure I provide sufficient coverage to the new features that’ll make the biggest impression. I also want to know what I can write about in the future here, on this site, to keep Mac users coming back for more.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to try yet another unscientific poll to see what the Mac community is looking forward to most in Leopard. Here’s the poll:

As usual, your comments and additional insight are appreciated. Use the Comments link or form at the end of this post to share your thoughts.

Another poll.

As I type this, I’m listening to TWiT 103: The Good, The Bad, the iPhone. It’s an excellent podcast episode with over an hour of conversational commentary by Leo Laporte, Richard Baguley, Veronica Belmont, Ryan Block, and Cali Lewis.

Moments ago, they were discussing the different cellular carriers. One hates Cingular and wonders whether AT&T will be better. Another says it has to be better than Verizon, but what’s wrong with AT&T? Another says he has no problem with Verizon, but wonders about T-Mobile. In other words, everyone has an opinion and none of the opinions seem to correspond.

It seems to me that everyone has at least one positive experience and one negative experience with at least one carrier. Those experiences are what keeps them with or away from specific carriers. I know that my comments about AT&T — which weren’t even about it’s cellular service — met with a lot of nasty complaints from people who thought I was mistaken.

So here’s the latest poll, which I’ll let run indefinitely:

Don’t just vote; use the Comments link or form for this post to share your comments about your preferred provider and/or one you may have had problems with in the past. If you select Other from the poll choices, be sure to let us know which provider you use. Obviously, my list is not exhaustive, although it should cover most providers available in the US, where I live.

My only request — keep it civil, folks.