OT: 802.11b or Bluetooth access points in T.O.?

[Steve]

On Tue, 02 Nov 2004 09:36:31 -0500, Austin <aacton-B71PBEe7S7Y at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
> In typical Bluetooth style, I have seen much hoopla in the press about
> the potential for hotspots, but I've yet to see one in practice.
> 
> It's hard to beat 802.11 for simplicity, practicality, and speed.
> 
> And back to the original question, while there are very few official
> free wifi hotspots, if you just need to check your mail in a pinch or
> something, you can find completely open networks almost anywhere
> downtown.  I walked down Roncesvalles the other day, and there were open
> nets almost the entire length of the street.  I mean fully open:
> broadcast on, no encryption, no authentication, dhcp available, gateway
> available.  If you're beaming that out into the street, you'd have a
> hard time convincing a court that you forbade anybody else to use it.
> And with Rogers and Bell both offering nearly unlimited bandwidth (in
> most people's terms) I don't feel bad checking me email or reading
> Slashdot from a park bench.  (Searching for nets without broadcast or
> cracking wep: that's a whole different, and not-so-innocent issue.)

That's a very enticing argument for wi-fi :-) Might sway me to Sony
instead of Palm for my handheld purchase based on this alone... heh
heh. Just curious, but what hardware did you to access? Handheld or
laptop?

-Steve.
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