First in a series of WiFi news, bringing you information about free WiFi hotspots in the city of Birmingham.First up, The Kitchen bar/cafe in The Custard Factory.
Checked it out at around 3pm on a Monday for an hour. Pretty quiet with no more than 5 or 6 people in there. No other computers than I saw. Felt secure. Plug sockets under at least one table but didn't use it myself. Bought one cup of tea (£1.20) and used WiFi without asking.
Connected to "The Kitchen" network with no authorization required. Lots of other networks detected but didn't try them. Decent speed - about 60kb/sec on download so probably a 1Mbit connection. Tables are large enough to work on without being obtrusive and benches fairly comfy. Potential to also work outside by the pond. Background music - not too loud or obtrusive.
Total score, allowing for the fact I haven't tried any other places out yet and don't have a methodology in place, I'd say 8 out of 10. Give or take.
1 Comments:
I've also used that wifi AP when I've been at nights run in the Factory part of the place. Totally geeky of me, if I've needed a sitdown and a quiet few minutes I've usually flipped open the smartphone and gone on music forums or checked the news (totally addicted I am!) and yes, I've also found the open access very useful during the daytime if I've been there and needed to check something.
It's a shame there's not that many open APs... I myself run a Fon AP at my house, but there's not that many other Fon APs in Brum centre. I ended up getting a fixed-rate data package on my Vario 2 though so I hardly ever use open APs now!
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