I’ve been on the road now since Labor Day 2005. Internet access is sometimes more prevelent than I expect, and often quite slow when I’ve paid $$ for it. I’ve been computing for 3 days in San Francisco. Many hours of the day I have extremely slow service, even though I’ve paid $8 per day! Apparently the weather effects service.
I also discovered that satellite connections are quite slow, regardless whether you paid the higher price for “business” access levels. Direcway in SW Oregon and NW California seems to be common. The speed is not worth the cost, however, if you must do a lot of work online.
I find that many RV parks use a third party for the service, which works for me, as it allows me to register, pay, and login from the comfort of my home, rather than go into the rec room at the office/building. However, the companies that run these services often have terrible sites and no way to get support. One exception is WiFiRV. Their service was excellent. Too bad the contracting RV Park was using Direcway to connect. Satellite hardware seems to defeat the purpose of high speed access via the third (or forth party, in this case–though at Richardson Grove in the Redwoods, you have little choice).
I’m at at Best Western in Fresno, while the transmission is being replaced. This chain works with SpeedLinks, which has excllelnt support out of Pheonix (I was on the phone with them for an hour). When hooked up in the motel office with ethernet the connection is very fast and reliable. However, the motel boasts their wireless access. No amount of fiddling has allowed me to access the internet wirelessly, however. I’m using an Apple iBook, which receives a very strong signal, but will not connect to the interent. Repeated attemps to reconfigure my system to fit theirs has not worked. And apparently they’ve reset their equipment twice for me, with no change. Does their system ignore Macs?