I’m going to be in Chicago for a week next month, and it turns out that while the apartment I’ll be staying at does have internet access, it’s via the Starbucks downstairs. Apparently this is sufficient for most renters, but I’d rather have something a tad more dedicated: not is it more secure, but the VPN at my workplace (should I need to connect to it) has a problem with public access.
So I’ve been researching alternatives. Before my eyes glazed over and my brain went numb, I gathered that prit’ near every one of them has one or more of the following — from my POV — drawbacks:[ul]
[li]Commitment to a contract (silly when I’m only looking at a week)[/li][li]Low speed (sometimes little better than dialup)[/li][li]Bandwith restrictions (sometimes pretty stringent)[/li][li]Up front costs (generally for a proprietary adapter)[/li][/ul]
(At this point I’m kind of sorry I parted company with Clear on pretty bad terms, since they seem to be the least-bad as far as the list is concerned. But the “new and improved” modem they sent my daughter was a piece of junk, and after numerous attempts to reprovision it failed, they finally determined that “it sucks to be you” — and I let them know that they could take the modem and put it where the sun don’t shine. No, I don’t think they’re an option.)
So it looks like I’m going to have to bite the bullet on at least one of the above. Before I do so, however, I’d like to see if any of the Dope have experience and/or recommendations I can draw on. I should point out that I’m not looking for “roaming” access: my internet use will be restricted to the apartment, which means that I’m not limited to a USB adapter and will/would be perfectly happy with a standalone modem thingy.
Thanks in advance,
OdF