[dennisbolt]

So I am having fun with my airport wirelss internet at home with the extreme basestation and now an express unit.

How exactly does it work with wireless hotspots and in hotels:

What do I have to enable and subscribe-to when I go to a starbucks or when I go to ahotel that advertises free wifi in rooms and public areas.

I can't picture being able to just open up my PB and voila I am on the internet.

When I take just my express base station and plug it into an ethernet someplace else how do I tell the PB to use just it and not the main basestation? And then how do I toggle back back home??

This may seem a bit simple, but I know that there are probably a lot of pitfalls before actually getting onto the web outisde my house!!!

[DigitalEl]

Not sure about hotels, but at T-Mobile HotSpot locations, such as Starbucks or Borders, you just fire up your browser. When you try to go to a website, you'll first be brought to the T-Mobile homepage, where you can set up your account. I forget the prices, but it's X-dollars a month or like $6 an hour.

After that initial account setup, you just put in your username and password, then surf at high speed. They debit your credit card automatically each month and you can see your monthly statement online. You don't actually get anything in the mail, if I remember correctly.

On subsequent trips to HotSpots, the T-Mobile welcome page, where you enter your username and password, only comes up once a session. And you don't even have to bookmark it, b/c it pops up automatically, no matter what site you try to go to first.

It's quite a novelty and an awesome convenience if you don't have high-speed at home, but once I got my home network up and running, I haven't used a HotSpot once. Why pay somewhere else when you have high-speed at home?

Lastly, if you go for the $6/hour deal, watch the clock. There's no warning about your time, AFAIK. If you go one minute over, you're payin' for that entire next hour!

Good luck!

[dennisbolt]

Thanks-that sounds too easy-even for a Mac. No fiddling with network or internet prefs?? Just open up Safari, or other browser. How about Apple's Mail application?

What about using the airport express connected to a hotel's hard wired ethernet?

[SSharon]

I was in a hotel recently with my ibook and it was as simple as turning it on and agreeing to the hotels rules which pop up right away when you go to any site. good thing is that it was free and that it only asked me to agree once a day.

Using the airport express may be more complicated as I have never used one but go someplace with free wifi and try it out.