The Business Blog at Intuitive.com

The ubiquity of WiFi... or not.

I'm staying at the Embassy Suites in Kansas City and they are proud clients of the VLINK Solutions wireless network for Internet Access here at the hotel. Theoretically, it's magic: there's a WiFi network throughout the hotel and once you sign on (at $10/day), you can then be online from anywhere in the hotel, whether the bar, a conference room, or, of course, your hotel room. Except the system fails miserably with my Macintosh. Whether running Safari or Microsoft's Internet Explorer, it generates an OLE DB error page if I try to enter my credit card number (something I'm reticent to do anyway on a wireless network, even with an SSL-based connection) and when I went ahead and paid for VLINK access cards from the front desk, the system refuses to accept as valid the card numbers given.

It's another example of the gap between what could be, and what is. The theory is nice, but the reality is that VLINK needs to get their act together: it's ridiculous to expect that anyone here at the Embassy Suites has a clue about computer connectivity and the nuances of 802.11 networking. And as a guest, I certainly don't want to spend any of my vacation time messing with configurations, connections, and compatibility issues.

And so... I've given up my hopes of high-speed access, turned in the cards, and requested that they reverse the charges for all local calls ($0.75/call) so I can just use my Earthlink dialup account instead. It's very 20th century, but y'know what? It works.