Getting Online Away From Home
On the road with your laptop? Here's how to get online.
Thanks to the wireless world we now live in, it's pretty easy to connect to the Internet and take care of e-mail wherever you go. Any computer or gadget equipped for wireless networking can get you online when you’re on vacation, traveling for business, hanging out at the mall or otherwise just out and about.
Let's go over some of the most common ways to get your laptop connected when you wander from home.
Hotspots
Most mobile computer users today are familiar with hotspots. A hotspot is a public location that makes a wireless network — or Wi-Fi — available to anyone in range of it. If your laptop is equipped for wireless networking — most are these days — you can get online at a hotspot.
It’s important to know that hotspots come in two basic flavors: free and not free.
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Free hotspots: Places such as restaurants, hotels, coffee shops and bookstores often set up a free hotspot as a way to entice you to hang out and spend money. But government-operated facilities such as airports, libraries and highway rest stops frequently offer free Wi-Fi as a public service.
The downside of free hotspots is that they are not secure. Encryption methods like you’d use to protect your wireless network at home are not practical to implement for folks coming and going. This means your online communications are vulnerable to hackers and security breaches. If this makes you nervous, companies such as Witopia and HotSpotVPN offer hotspot virtual private network (VPN) services that, for a monthly or annual fee, encrypt data you send from an unsecured hotspot. Expect to pay $40 to $100 a year for such a service.
How do you find a free hotspot in your neighborhood? The JiWire Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder is a good place to start. Or type “find hotspots” into any search engine and you’ll find other Web sites with tools you can use to expose hotspots in your area.
Fee-based hotspots: Some wireless service providers have created their own subscription-based network of hotspots that deliver online access at well-known coffee shops, bookstores, hotels and other hangouts. T-Mobile is the best known of this bunch. Another popular player in this arena is Boingo, which brings numerous Wi-Fi hotspot operators under a single umbrella. If you have a Boingo account, you can get online at any hotspot in its global network.
