We now return to our regular series of reports on free WiFi hotspots in Birmingham.

My favourite at the moment is Rooty Frooty in the Custard Factory where you can get a very strong and reliable signal and, most importantly, a substantial cup of tea for £1.10. The music is of a decent quality and not too intrusive and there's plenty of room to spread out, though it does get a little busy at lunch time, as you'd expect. It's not the best place to crack on with some serious writing but for surfing and email it's great. Apparently the vegetarian food is terrific too but I haven't checked it out yet.

Coffee Lounge on Navigation St (opposite the rear entrance to New St Station) is probably the most blatantly wifi friendly place I've found. In their downstairs (which will presumably be smoke free next week if that's put you off in the past) you'll often see plenty of folks with laptops plugged into the walls working away, and being downstairs there's no distractions from the street. It's as near as you'll get to an office environment, I reckon. Good for a long slog of work. Tea's a bit pricey though and comes in those daft big round cups, but what do you expect from a place that specializes is coffee.

I found myself in the Big Peg's cafe-bar, The Quarter, early one morning and did a wifi sniff. They have a network available but the signal was very weak and I couldn't get online. I could have tried moving around or checked to see if it was even on but to be honest I needed a bit of time without web distractions to get some writing done so I left it. But there's definitely a network there so it'll be worth trying. I'll report back next time I'm there.

For a bit of fun I thought I'd see what wifi connections I could get on the Festival of Xtreme Building site since it's a rather nice place to hang out in the middle of the city. There be signals buzzing around there like flies on shit but none of them are open, or if they are they're incredibly unreliable. It's almost as if wifi is affected by the wind, which is mildly plausible, possibly. Okay, it's not. So unfortunately there'll be no surfing inside the Micro Compact Home just yet.

Any more whiffletips, leave them in the comments.

Previously: The Kitchen.