Ahh, coffee and free wifi. Here is my table of espresso places with free WiFi on the Eastside of Seattle. WiFi (or Wi-Fi) is IEEE 802.11b wireless networking that you can access from your laptop or PDA. Starbucks has their T-Mobile HotSpots and Tully's and McDonald's have their Cometa hot spots, but the price for access seems high to me — free is so much better. Update 6/9/04: Cometa has gone bankrupt and these access points are now free, at least until 6/18/04 and we'll see what happens then.
Kick back, have a latte and biscotti, and cruise the net.
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Crossroads Public Market NE 8th Street and 156th Ave NE Bellevue, Washington |
The whole food court has free wireless from the King County Library (all county library branches have free WiFi). Apparently Microsoft installed a bunch of antennas there as part of an experiment and they are still used. There's a Starbucks inside that gets good reception, and also a café in the QFC that serves SBC espresso. My Sony VAIO laptop connected automatically; I didn't have to do a thing - nice. |
| QFC Market Café 2902 228th Ave SE Sammamish (the Plateau) |
Free Wifi for anyone to use. There's a little area off to one side with tables and chairs. Using my Sony laptop, I had to select the node (from a list of one) but there was no password and it worked fine. The coffee's OK too. |
| Nordstrom's espresso stand Bellevue Square |
Clark Humphrey reports that the espresso stand at Nordstrom's in Bellevue Square has free WiFi from the nearby Apple store. I have confirmed that this works. Signal strength is low, but it works. |
| Third Place Books 17171 Bothell Way NE Lake Forest Park |
Ok, maybe this isn't the Eastside, but it's east of Shoreline, anyway. Owned by the same company that owns Crossroads. There is free WiFi here, logon is automatic like at Crossroads, signal strength was medium on my Sony Clie UX-50 PDA. It worked fine. The Honey Bear Bakery makes an excellent latté and there are many tables to sit at. |
| Carillon Point 2255 Carillon Point Kirkland |
This one is unusual. The whole Carillon Point complex has free WiFi. There is a Starbucks here, but it has a (pay) T-Mobile Hotspot, and inside the Starbucks that signal overwhelms the free Wifi. You have to pay for parking here, but Starbucks gave me a 1.5 hour validation when I bought a latte. I walked out of Starbucks and down towards the marina. There are plenty of tables, chairs and benches to sit at. Out there, my Sony Ux50 PDA was able to connect just fine with the free WiFi. It popped up a screen asking me for all kinds of personal info, but I just gave it my name and my Yahoo! email address and it was satisfied with that. This whole complex feels to me overly fancy and corporate, but if I lived nearby I would use it. |
See also:
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