Today I went to Starbucks and Noah’s Bagels for breakfast in Cupertino. Unbeknownst to me, Starbucks cancelled their T-mobile Hotspot there because….MetroFi launched all over Cupertino.
So I connected to MetroFI and MAN IT WAS AWFUL. It was incredibly slow and right before I left, it crawled to a complete stop. AND, they proxy-served every page so that there was this annoying banner ad on top of every web page.
Remember when we were all excited about free dialup services like Netzero? They forced us to watch banner ads but we could get online for free. Now free WIFI works the same way.
Well OK. Maybe they gotta find a way to support it somehow. But I totally ignored those ads and most of them were terrible anyways. But then, on my T-series Sony VAIO, screen real estate is precious due to its smaller height. So every web page got an extra inch cutoff!
So not only could I not view webpages better, but I couldn’t even really get online because everybody else around me was surfing an obviously overloaded connection. I bet they were streaming videos and music too.
In Palo Alto, there is the same deal with Anchorfree. They put banner ads on every page too. AND, Gmail didn’t work. Are they blocking specific ports? Or did the Gmail server not respond in time to the browser and just time out? Again, since it was free, I guess everybody got on it and overloaded that network too.
Thank god for the Apple Store network. I managed to find a cafe across the street from the Apple Store in Palo Alto and connected to that. IT WORKED GREAT.
If I were a cafe in Cupertino or Palo Alto, I’d just spend $50/month on DSL and then buy a $50 LInksys router and let people surf much faster than using this broken free crap.
Bring back T-Mobile! I pay a monthly fee to use T-Mobile specifically at Starbucks and in the Admiral’s Club lounge at the airport. The price factor limits the number of people using it…and that’s great for me….!