[this is one of those posts I started writing months ago and never quite finished…whoops!]
See that upload speed? 14 kbps. That’s 14-friggin-kilobytes-per second. Let me put that into perspective for those that haven’t been on this earth long: people on dial-up modems generally connect at speeds around 50 kbps. The speed you’re seeing above, 14 kbps, is the kind of speed I saw with my 14,400 bps modem back in…well, it’s so far back I can’t recall. I’d have to guess and say around 1989 (give or take a year or two). And where did I discover such amazingly bad access speeds? Did I travel back in time to find a 14.4kbps modem? No, I stayed at a La Quinta hotel in Orlando, Florida. I was staying there on my own dime, and by myself, so I picked some place decent but cheap. They advertised free WiFi in all the rooms, and that combined with a clean bed is all I really need when I’m working (and I was down there for my CTIA 2007 gig).
The short version of this story is that the Internet access turned out to be a complete nightmare – when I could get connected it was at mostly pathetic speeds like you see above. I was on the phone with Guest Tech support at least once a day for each of the five days I was staying there for. Every time the technician would confirm my problem, try to fix it by remotely giving the hotel router a kick, and I’d usually get connected at a decent speed – at least for a while. You can imagine how frustrating it is to try and get work published online when you’re losing connectivity every few minutes. I don’t know whether it was the hotel not having a fast enough connection to support the number of hotel guests that were connected, or whether it was Guest Tech not providing a stable infrastructure, but whenever I see the name Guest Tech in my hotel room I shudder. The same thing happened when I was at the last MVP Summit – Guest Tech was providing Internet access at the hotel I was staying, and the Internet access was so slow it was useless…that’s if you were lucky enough to get an IP address. Guest Tech? You suck.
Far be it from me to not pile on Guest Tech.
I stayed at the Sheraton in Santa Monica. 3 nights. ZERO internet access. It’s a web sign in and you plug into your lamp. I was told that it “should” be working.
It never did.
Now I don’t even bother. I have a Verizon USB EVDO Rev A modem I carry with me when I travel. 1.5 megs down and no security issues. No more $10 a day for internet that “should” work.
I've used guest tech at various locations and didn't have any problems.