We were hoping that the downtown free high-speed wireless internet network (Toronto Hydro’s OneZone) would allow us to make hospital blog posts, check our mail, etc., from our laptop. Here is my review of the service (written from my at-home computer, for reasons that will become obvious):
In the O.R. waiting room our MacBook found the wireless network easily enough, but we kept getting error messages. No biggie, we figured we were not getting a strong enough signal in that interior room, so we’d wait until we got to Jon’s room, where there’s a window. In Jon’s room we did get a better signal, but we had noticed in the signup instructions that it said once you access the network you’ll get a browser window automatically come up with the sign-up/login page. Oh, really?
After calling their support line we find out that this is a Windows-only thing; he gave me the sign-up web address over the phone. Not impressive, and kind of silly. What’s the point in making your sign-up/login page super-secret and inaccessible from your own website? He also warned me that OneZone does not support Macs. Stupider and stupider.
Once on the signup page, you enter your cellphone number, and get text messaged your login ID and password. If you put in spaces or hyphens where you enter your cellphone number, you get an error message (but nowhere does it initially warn you to leave them out—poor UI design). After four tries using two different cellphones, we finally got our ID and password.
So how was it? It’s slow. Reeeeally slow. I don’t know whether it’s just because I had a poor signal where I was, or if it’s a Mac/Windows thing, but I gave up making blog posts or accessing gmail because it just took forever. Peter and I successfully managed to iChat for a bit, but my messages kept piling up and then appearing in his window all at once, which I suppose is okay if you like non-sequiturs.
Luckily for our hospital stay, Toronto Hydro has extended the free access period—it was originally going to expire early March; now it’s early April. After all that hassle, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to pay for it!
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Peter says:
March 22, 2007 at 9:52 pm (UTC 0)
I love it when services like this say that they don’t support Macs. For one thing, Macs network like any other computer, only with less idiotic wizards. And they did tell Laura what she had to do for the Mac, so they DID support it. Silly.
Peter says:
March 22, 2007 at 10:10 pm (UTC 0)
By the way, it’s quite acceptable tonight.
Roger says:
March 24, 2007 at 10:56 am (UTC 0)
I had problems with my MAC too a while ago.
I find that the service has been really fast the last little while… They must be working out bugs… Does anyone know if you can pay with your hydro bill?