Continuing the theme of travel with a laptop, what has become your standard method of obtaining Internet access?

The old and new

For myself, in the bad old days it was a tedious process of finding a suitable telephone line to enable dial up access. This was often a difficult mix of trying to find the right socket adapter for whatever country you happened to be in and trying to get your modem to work. Once all that was sorted out there was still the matter of the line cost, which if you were in a hotel could often be quite substantial. Move forward a few years and things have improved; we are no longer tied to land based phone lines. In fact I can’t remember the last time I resorted to dial up to read my email, if I had to I probably just wouldn’t bother at all.

Broadband access

Now we will generally have a choice of wired or wireless broadband access and data services through a mobile phone network. Which is of course a big improvement, but what about the cost? Here things are not so different. With very few exceptions as a business traveler you will still be charged high rates for Internet access, and mobile data services costs will always mount up. However there is one thing that has changed all that, and that is the relatively wide availability of free or inexpensive WiFi which can often be found even in the most unlikely of places. Lots of establishments around the world such as pubs and coffee shops now provide free WiFi access, and there is often free WiFi schemes set up by local groups.

Finding WiFi access

The trick is of course to find the available access points, and if you can manage this without booting up the laptop so much the better. One tool I have found invaluable for this sort of thing is the Hawking Tech. HWL2 Hi-Gain WiFi Locator, which works really well and will even boost weak signals if used as your adapter.

What is your preferred way to find that elusive WiFi signal? If you don’t use WiFi what is your preferred method of getting on line while traveling?