Digital Maricopa

I figured I would give a quick start to reviewing WiFi access in the area. Mc. Donalds is my first attempt at this so please bear with me.

 

After ordering food and sitting down in the children’s playland area with the rest of the parents that just want the kids to expel the bundled up energy, I opened the laptop and started on my WiFi trek. Testing systems around the area sounds like fun to me and I wanted to come up with a review system that will also make it easier for you to make your choices in using WiFi in the area.  If you have any comments or suggestions to these raitings feel free to post your comments.

 

First:  Cost of service. This should be a high priority. Lots of businesses are charging or giving away their service and with pennies being pinched right now, this is a good place to start.

 

Second:  Ease of use. The service start page needs to be clearly laid out (if their is one), and if you need to pay for the service, their needs to be multiple ways to pay for the service easily.

 

Third:  Speed of the service. It is not like your gonna play WoW or do some heavy downloading on these services. Some places will not pony up the speed though just to save a buck on bandwidth costs.  I will be looking and rating these services against a standard cable modem connection (5Mb down/515kb up).  Also I will use speedtest.net for the testing. I will use Phoenix, New York and Houston for the testing.

 

Fourth:  Ambiance of the area. Yeah, the service may be free, speed great, and be a really cool setup for their web connection, but sitting in a dumpster of a business is still not a place I would want to do my surfing.

 

Each level will be graded on a 4 point system. Total possible is 16 points. I may change this later to some other scale (colors, gold, etc.) but for now 4 points should be enough.

Now on to Mc. Donalds here in Maricopa.

 

Cost: To use the McDonald’s WiFi service (provided by Wayport) it will cost you 2.95 for two hours. The price is more than I would like to see. I figure a buck an hour is max most of the time. This is offset however in my case since I can send the kids to the playland and have them play for a couple hours without much interruption to me. I think the extra 50 cents an hour is worth it.  Rating of 2.5 here.

 

Ease of use: When you connect to the access point here, the first web page you will see will show you how you can connect to their WiFi here. Credit card can be use, or if you have a Wayport account already, you just log in.  Their is the possibility of coupons out on the web as well. Easy to use, self explanatory, I give it a 4.

 

Speed of Service: I ran the test 3 times to verify the speeds. Here are the results (as reported from speedtest.net)

 

Pings are in the 100-150 range on average. Higher than I like to play first person shooters, but good enough for the internet. Download of 1.5Mb per second is low. I believe having Wayport as the provider means having a T1 connection. (1.5Mb down/1.5Mb up). Their is upload limits set, but they are acceptable. I am the only one using the service so I am getting full download. I would like to see how it handles multiple connections some time. Giving it a 3 here.

 

Ambiance of the area: It’s Mc. Donalds. Doing your WiFi in the main seating area when your alone will make it look like your on lunch break. Doing it in the children’s area with a child makes it look like you want a break. It isn’t too comfy here and the table is kinda small. Nobody bothers you though and you can get more food quickly if needed. I give it a 3.

 

Totals:

Cost: 2.5
Ease: 4
Speed: 3
Ambiance: 3
——————-
Final Score:12.5

Likes:Child friendly, quick food and free refills.

Dislikes: Noisy, Can be crowded, and I have to pay