FYI, I'd like to share my experience in accessing Wi-Fi hotspots with my N800 during a recent overseas cruise. Results were mixed. I found free hotspots to be rather rare. I had hoped to find some in order to use Skype to call back to the US.

Virtually all hotels, airports, and other locations had fee-based wi-fi, but I never did find the optimal service or sbuscription plan. Even on the cruise ship, where I did pay for access, Skype would not work. Most websites loaded, and I was even able to listen to a Washington DC news radio station! But, it's no fun to listen long with that meter running!

I welcome comments on finding a useful hotspot service. I looked at Boingo, but couldn't really tell if it would have fit my needs.

I keep hearing about free wifi in Europe, but so far my experiences (limited to Finland and Switzerland) do not bear out the rhetoric. Then again, what I'm looking for is OPEN wifi, with no secret login or WEP. Hotels have free wifi, but you need to be a guest or look like one.

I travel to Germany often and found that Boingo is the best service I've found for my needs. Boingo does not have an easy log-on program for N800 but with a little patience one can still use their service. Most hotels/airports have a log-on website with a drop down list of companies that one can select, there you will find Boingo (most of the time). Boingo has a flat monthly rate for unlimited use in States and Europe. You can also call and ask them if they provide service to the places you plan on visiting.
I found Minimo browser the best one to log-on to Boingo (Opera gave me problems).

My experience in Britain was very poor. I found almost no free wifi. Hotels charged twenty bucks an hour! Typical European ripoff. A Tmobile/starbucks pass is probably the best bet. Or use an all-you-can-eat 3G service. They do, at least, have good cellular networks

It's seems to be the summer of WiFi in the good 'ol US of A...
I just returned from a Musikfest in Bethlehem, PA and found free WiFi through out that city provided by merchants and food vendors and it kept the crowds lingering longer around their shops.

Their effect on the 10,000 people milling about between venues could be easily measured over the course of the 10 day affair. Not many had WiFi devices but the few that did would hang where they got signal and the lemming nature of the crowd would cause others to stop maybe just to figure out why. Most never did, but they more than likely bought refreshment or other merchandise before they moved on.

>> http://www.musikfest.org/about/history.asp

Also: Of the 3 large food markets in my home town 1 has WiFi and a small Cafe...

Guess which one I am more likely to accompany my partner to while she makes our weekly purchase?

Now I suppose someone traveling from overseas could use these places to make a call home if they had to and that's what makes the IT's a handy travel companion.

I suppose the same is true in other countries too. A local would know what food market has WiFi, a visitor would have a greater chance of going to one that doesn't.

The best way to find free wifi overseas is right here, in planning your trip. They are hard to find unless you have a prepared list. As I recall, the main square in Tallinn, Estonia had freel wifi. Estonia is a pleasant country to visit and the only one I know of that has a picture of a chessplayer (gm paul keres) on one denomination of its paper money.

The most popular place to use wifi everywhere is at home, so in theory there is lots of cheap wifi available. Yesterday I encountered an intriguing site, www.couchsurfing.com, dedicated to sharing free lodging for travelers worldwide. You could use contacts from that site to line up free places to use wifi from, I imagine.

If you are looking for free Wifi use, join FON.
And if that doesn't help, join us...

Ton.

I travel quite a bit for work, including internationally. My experience is this:

Don't count on free Wi-Fi at all. Very few places offer it these days. The only places I find it now are a couple chains in the US, such as Panera Bread, Caribou Coffee, and Corner Bakery. In Europe, I've yet to find a free WiFi outside of some home user with an improperly configured wireless access point (meaning, they never set up security on it). Even those are becoming less common -- have Netgear/Linksys/etc made newer versions of their access point firmware require the user to set up security now?

As far as the hotspot providers go, there is no one provider that really covers all locations cost-effectively. In the US, T-Mobile has the best coverage for general walk-about considering all the Starbucks/Borders/etc on every street corner. However, travel outside the US and they are completely unusable due to the high roaming charges (18 cents/minute, even when using T-Mobile overseas). In Europe, Boingo seems to have much better partnership coverage. Boingo also has most of the major airports in the US (either through their acquisition of Concourse, or via roaming partnerships). So in addition to the unlimited T-Mobile plan, I also have a Boingo Global plan.

It may seem like a lot to pay for both a T-Mobile and a Boingo Global account, but consider situations like this: I've stayed in Hotels in London, which were serviced by Orange's wireless network (e.g., the Novotel line of hotels). Orange wants 20 euros a day for wireless access, but are a Boingo partner. With the Boingo Global account, I was able to connect to the Orange network in the hotel for no additional charge via my Boingo Global account. So in 2 days (I was there for a full week), the Boingo Global monthly fee "paid for itself" vs. if I had to pay 20 euros for each of 6 days...

On my laptop, the Boingo Wireless Client is very handy, as it auto-logs you in to any Boingo partner's WiFi. In the US, you can also configure it to auto-login to T-Mobile hotspots via their 802.11x SSID (tmobile1x). So one connection manager automates login to both my hotspot accounts. I really wish Nokia would get Boingo to port their connection manager to the N800, as it is just begging for a proper wireless connection manager. But for now, you can still log in to Boingo partnered hotspots using your Boingo credentials on their web access portal page. As was previously mentioned, some of them have a "pick your roaming partner" selection when you enter your credentials. For others, you may have to modify your username. E.g., "boingo/<username>" or "<username>@boingo.com".

Also, with regards to the comment about cruise ships: I'm not surprised Skype didn't work well. Those ships typically use a low-bandwidth sat-based system for their Internet access. Might be OK for checking E-mail, but even that is probably going to be frustratingly slow. For what they charge for it, it's just not worth it. They also charge exorbitant amounts for using a cell phone as well... Like $6/minute for the roaming fees on some cruise lines.... No thanks.

FON might be an option when traveling in Europe. But in the US, FON is pretty much non-existent.