[quote=sdcellar]Eh? Starbucks wi-fi used to cost, then it was free for AT&T customers, then it was free for everybody and now they’re actually spending money to attract people to use it. Hotels have always been hit or miss.
Don’t get me wrong, I still have my cell phone, but free wi-fi is hardly going the way of the dodo. At least, not yet.[/quote]
sdcellar, when I travel, I take a small dog and so have to stay in motor lodges, i.e. Best Western, Days Inn, etc. You are correct in that oftentimes their wireless access is spotty or slow. When I get to my destination and stay with relatives, often they are just far enough outside of town or in a rural area where most of them don’t have routers themselves and there may be an open router down the road but too far down to get fast enough service. I never wanted to get the ATT USB gadget that plugs into a laptop because their service is $60 per month and I only need it when I travel. HOWEVER, I just rec’d notification last week from ATT that they will offer this service by the week, on an as-needed basis! Since all my trips are planned ahead, this will work for me!
I can’t text due to carpal tunnel issues. I just have Nation 450 service for $45 mo and always have tons of rollover minutes to use when traveling. My texting/MediaNet was turned off by ATT because I was constantly hitting the phone in my pocket or purse and ran up the bill with bytes so everyone knows to call me. This display on my phone is almost too small to read anyway.
I have an older walkman phone that came out in 2006 that is in mint condition because it has always been in a case. It has a lot of memory and is my i-pod, too, which I use daily. The camera isn’t great (only 2mp) and I would like to get the newer 905 sony camera phone (now unavail with ATT) but WILL NEVER sign another contract. (I don’t have a separate digital camera and depend on using whoever I’m traveling with’s camera.) When I switch to the newer 905, I will keep the old walkman for my i-pod.
My plan is to order the Sony 905 phone from e-bay (abt $150-$200) and immediately “flash it” upon receipt (if the reseller did not already do so) and then move my ATT chip to it. Then all the orig. sony apps will work with it and I can use it to access e-mail and stuff when I am parked at Starbucks or McDonald’s.
ATT is a scam because they block the true capabilities of your phone so they can lay all these charges on your monthly bill, feeding their version back to you bit by bit. But their Nation service and M2M are worth $45 per month to me as more than half my contacts are using ATT.
Oh, and my kids . . . they’ve got the whole i-phone thing going on with their 387 “friends” on FB, etc., but I’m not paying for it. My youngest knows they’ve got to actually “call” me and pick up when I call . . . pronto :=)
