Free Wireless Hotspots. Taking your laptop for a walk.

Have you gotten the impression of free wireless hotspots being offered from Bournemouth to Stockton to Salt Lake City to Waukesha?

If you know where the so-called 'hotspots' are in your city, places having wireless internet access, you can take your laptop everywhere!

Public Hotspots

If you wish to take your laptop to hotspots, start your search with major public institutions. More and more libraries have the option wireless access and, if you're a student, take a look at your university campus: it might be already wireless-enabled, or it will soon become so.

Private Hotspots

Where wireless hotspots are becoming very popular, however, is in the private sector. Businesses are fighting against each other to be able to give free Internet access to their business customers in their cafes, hotels or airports. All you need is your laptop, and either Centrino technology or a wireless PCMCIA card.

But why would it be beneficial for cafes to offer wireless Internet access for free? Just think about this from this perspective: why would you spend money to sit in some dirty Internet cafe, when you could simply use the Internet for free in an otherwise normal café where you can eat and drink too?

By investing a minimum amount of money into wireless Internet access, these cafes can target a new and extended audience, especially where it is difficult to get Internet access otherwise. The same applies for hotels and airports: customers' value wireless access as a big advantage, and will choose to go to places that offer it.

Finding Them In Your City

Even though there are many hotspots, you might not realize it as they don't usually do a lot of marketing. After conducting a little search in your town, you may be pleasantly surprised to find so many hotspots, especially if you live in a decently populated area.

Search on the web to find hotspots in your local area. The most complete website you can take a look at is usually JiWire.com. To access this information, go to their website, or otherwise type your postcode into Yahoo Maps and select 'WiFi Hotspots' from the menu you find on the right of your screen.

If this is something you don't have time to do, you can simply look for a Starbucks. They are all over the place, and almost all of them have wireless Internet access, at least in some parts of the store. Borders and Kinko's are also good places you can try. If you can't find any of these places, try to ask in a cafe close to you.

Your Wireless ISP

When looking for a hotspot, keep in mind that some of them, especially those with more convenient locations, will ask you to pay a little fee for using a wireless ISP. You can generally pay with a prepaid card at the place where the access is offered. If you don't want to spend your money, look for smaller independent places instead.

Hotspot Locator Hardware

You can use hotspot locator hardware to get connected in your area too, they are commonly referred to as WiFi Finders

Hotspot Locator Software

Of course, if you have Internet yourself, why would you make so many efforts to find hotspots on the Internet, or go personally hunting for them? What you can do then is to download and install hotspot locator software on your computer.

With this software, you have access to a database of all known hotspots right on your computer, so that you can search at any time you want, regardless of whether you're online or offline.

Type in your postcode or the name of your town and the software will give you a list of the closest hotspots, sorted by distance from you. Every time you connect to the Internet, the software will connect to its server to download the latest hotspot list and guarantee that your database is always updated.

You can get hotspot locator software for free from the hotspot providers' sites. Currently, the larger provider is T-Mobile Hotspot offering software for free at http://www.tmobile.com/hotspot but you can also search online at http://www.wifimaps.com/

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