A lot of times I post to this blog from my favorite coffee shop, Uncommon Grounds. They have free WiFi access. It's unsecured, but there's no annoying capture portal, and the speed is on par with most any cable modem (that is what it's connected to, after all).
However, I also often do some reading at Panera, as I am tonight. The connection here is also unsecured, but it has one of those annoying capture portals that takes forever to present a kind of miniature EULA and then forward me to Panera's website.
The problem, though, is the speed. It's abyssmal. It's like they're running the whole thing off of a dial-up connection. and not one of those fancy 56k modems, either. No no, we're talking 28.8 at best.
Usually it works alright to casually look around while I eat. But it frequently drops my VPN connection to my company's Exchange server - which is very annoying. And when it does connect, it takes forever to sync my folders (as my RSS feeds are directly deposited into Exchange folders, they get quite large).
Tonight the connection was especially bad. It took 4 or 5 tries just to “log in,” and then loading web pages was hit-or-miss, and when it did work it took eons.
So if I'm not using their free WiFi, what am I using? My cell phone.
It is exponentially faster than Panera's WiFi on its best days. I'm using Sprint's Vision network, which is 1xRTT and gives me about ~130kbps. It's amazing how much better it is than the WiFi here!
So... Panera has made a big deal about how they have free WiFi access on every block... but they don't brag about the speed, and now you know why.
On the other hand, my PPC-6601 is giving me a great bluetooth connection and getting me web pages (and my VPN) perfectly. It's nearly indistinguishable from being at home on the 5mbps cable. Only problem? My phone calls will go to voicemail as long as I'm connected, which is crummy.
Chalk up another point for Skype over wireless... There are no worries about your data connection blocking your voice connection when your voice is the data.