So I’m at Panera and there are all these college age students here with their laptops (I’m sure a few are older and a few are younger), more than I’ve ever seen here before. My guess is that a good portion of them are home from college for the weekend and their parent’s homes don’t have the high-speed internet access that they’ve gotten used to at college. So they’re here using the free WiFi. At least that’s my theory (and I’m sticking to it).
One thing I’ve noticed other times when at Panera is that the network always seems to work (start working) better if I launch Internet Explorer first, I’m not sure why, but whenever I’m at a hotspot and having problems that seems to get me going. I think it helps at other places but it really helps at Panera (it might be the user agreement they have you agree to before proceeding).
I noticed an extra network when I was trying to connect called “Kristy” and also noticed an iBook user who had all sorts of windows open (but none had web pages). We tried the above IE “trick” but I guess the new iBooks don’t ship with it. It was her first time trying to connect to a WiFi hotspot so there might be some other problem.
We never did get it going, I think it’s something in the “internet connect” options, she somehow created a 802.1x (point to point?) network and we couldn’t delete it. I had something similar happen once upon a time and it seems to me it was a bit of a problem until I was able to delete it, but I don’t know what I did to do that.
You’re probably right!! I was almost going to laugh at the thought of these kids spending time at Panera using the wifi instead of spending time with their family. But then I remembered how I spent my breaks from college—d’oh. :)
I guarantee it’s the free wifi. I’ve got highspeed at home (DSL) but would still love to be able to get out of the house to get some work done, but I need to get a wireless card that will work with my G3 PowerBook. Any suggestions? Will any wireless card work in a Mac? I’ve heard yes and no.
At least these kids aren’t warspying and tapping into other wireless networks illegally.
There were (are?) initiatives to get other cards working especially ones that use the same chipset (orinico?) but overall I think using the other ones just turned out to be a hassle. Seems to me the card had to be out when you rebooted or you’d have to reboot etc. and you couldn’t let it go to sleep. At least that was with early OS X on the G3 PowerBook that I tried.
I think the Apple Airport card is smaller so you need some (probably pricey) adaptor (I never did try the original Airport in that G3 PB) so it might be worth trying one of the other cards. Also probably depends on if you’re running 9 or 10.x?
I was googling around looking for this page (the driver I used) http://wirelessdriver.sourceforge.net/ and found the other (possibly helpful) pages below:
http://www.cmu.edu/computing/wireless/macchrt.html
http://homepage.mac.com/techedgeezine/cart_mac_pb4.html
Don’t know if that’ll be helpful to anyone…
Kevin, I agree. When I have to use the laptop for a few hours I’ll go somewhere else. Especially if it’s somewhere where I can grab a sandwich or dessert…
As a matter a fact I think I might pop over to the Burger Kind in a few and do that and have a cheeseburger too :)
As a college student, I must sadly admit that we are ADDICTED to wireless internet. I am disappointed whenever I have to travel and can’t access it… oh the horror!
P.S. I love your background! The color of the leaves is perfect!