Tech Tails Tip of the Week: Hotel Wireless

Whenever I travel, I make a point of staying at hotels that offer internet access. Most of them offer both wired and wireless connectivity, but very often the wireless is very slow. I tried to email Ed a photo of the Moscone Center here in San Francisco yesterday, but my connection was so bad that mail would time out every time I tried to send the half-megabyte picture.

I know that my hotel has 802.11 a/b/g capability, and also that Apple puts up its employees here. We’re a bandwidth-hungry bunch. With so many people trying to use the wireless network at once, it slowed down to the point of being completely unusable. I looked in a drawer in the room and found an ethernet cable and plugged it into the data port on the room’s phone. I turned off AirPort on my MacBook Pro and was delighted to discover super-fast connectivity!

So, this week’s tip: bring an ethernet cable with you whenever you’ll be staying in a hotel. Odds are the hotel will have a data port you can use if the wireless isn’t good enough. I knew there’s a reason they charge $39 for that cable!