More Internet Woes

The last time I was in Europe (2003), I had no trouble getting online. This time around, it has gotten a bit tougher. Most of the Internet cafes listed in the guidebook have gone out of business. Even the big ones -- in Madrid, the Easy Internet storefront was closed up and obviously for rent.

Last time, it was also pretty easy to get online with my laptop, but this time, people are really uptight. Lots of the places we do find have elaborate software schemes to track usage times and billing, and so they won´t let me just hook up my laptop to an ethernet port.

Bigg in Madrid had WiFi, but nobody else seems to be hip to the biggest new thing in connectivity. I spotted a couple very protected APs from our hotel in Toledo, but I´m disinclined to even think about using an AP that someone doesn´t want me to use.

Weird. Well, hopefully I´ll come up with a way to hook up my laptop soon, so I can upload some more entries that I´ve already written. Until then, I´m stuck at a Movistar (a Spanish cell phone company) Internet joint that is incredably fussy, and not all that functional. Bummer.