T-Mobile to Offer Free WiFi at Starbucks for Windows Vista Users

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T-Mobile and Microsoft are teaming up to offer free WiFi at Starbucks, Borders Books and Kinkos locations around the U.S for those with laptops running the new Windows Vista OS. Vista will launch next Monday and this offer will be good January 26th through April 30th.

The offer for free WiFi from a Vista laptop will actually go live tomorrow (January 26th) for those who managed to get a copy early. T-Mobile and Microsoft have a website up promoting this offer, it can be found here:

http://www.skysurprise.com

T-Mobile and Microsoft sponsored &quot;SkySurpise&quot; site promoting free WiFi for Vista users (view large image)

Maybe for those of you that are Starbucks fiends and like to do work while consuming caffeine it'll push you over the edge in deciding to upgrade.

 

Well, I might not have the money or desire to upgrade, and maybe I don't drink coffee and the closest location where this would be to me is 1 hour away, but that is pretty sweet. Too bad I can't take advantage of it.

 

I'm really surprised that T-Mobile / Microsoft really believe that offering free Wi-Fi at Starbucks are going to convert WinXP users to WinVista ones...if anything, people are going to upgrade because they want to. (Certainly people aren't going to ditch Linux or Mac OS for this!!)

 

Even more intriguing it looks like it's a limited time offer. So a few months from now the Windows Vista coffee atticts will be paying again. Even if it's not, its not that motivating.

BTW the space shuttle graphic is interesting...

 

Im a daily coffeehouse wifi user and I travel a lot so I want to chime in....

The t mobile business model is over. Whoever signed up for it when it was new has finally discovered free wi fi at a different coffee place than borders or startbucks. The person who actually pays 20$ a month for this is like a stockbroker or a lawyer... And a dumb one too....

Whatever they pay those businesses, those businesses lose more in lost bussiness at this point.
On my last road trip I saw whats happening. In all the tmobile hotspot locations they have installed a wimax router. Its not on the internet at this moment but its going to go online soon

So the new business model is going to be slow but free wireless with a range only in the store ( tmobile sets up their routers in a way to try and prevent wireless from reaching the parking lot)
And a paid service from their wireless n routers. Assumedly you can get wireless a long way from the hotspot, like a mile and a half.

 

EV-DO cards are commonly used by business people too, I splurge on one myself and have no use for WiFi hotspots either -- I agree it's not a business that's going to go any further than it has (which wasn't far).

 

Wow, Microsoft sure is throwing lots of promotions and marketing into Vista. The only one that I think will have an impact on sales is the buy Ultimate, get two more licenses for $50.

 

Wait...I thought wifi at those locations was already free? Last time I paid any attention to this they were setting up free wifi networks in Starbucks and McDonalds and the like in order to try to attract people to coming in and purchasing from them. Now they charge money for this feature? That's rather rediculous. I'd never use such a service anyway.

Microsoft is pushing Vista way too hard. Something stinks behind the scenes.... This marketing campaign is rediculous too btw. It actually turns me away because I don't like how it was executed. :/

 

I go to Borders often (read: I use Borders as a sit-in library), so this might be useful. I can chat with my friends while read manga. Sounds pretty cool, I guess. I'm going to convert from XP to Vista RC2.

Free + Free = Two Thumbs Up.

 

Well what i was trying to say was,

free for Vista this month

Free for everyone pretty soon. Tmobile is going to be like what you thought it was, a free wi fi for coffee places.

AND a ISP. It is going to be a wimax isp, paid service for home users and travelers.

 

Couple years back I setup cybercafe like pc's at a new fast food chain in US. I setup PC's with custom remastered linux LiveCD's. It was sort of free, basically any customer that buys food item from their will get a code number printed on their receipt. Customer can use that code number on the PC to login, after half hour of use the PC reboots itself from liveCD. Laptop users can use internet for longer time. Business wise the fastfood restaurant owner just wanted to add this as one additional cool feature to attract young crowd. During that time I was looking into wifi solutions etc and found that there was significant push for the citywide wifi networks and their were volunteer based free wife nodes (freenodes or something) available. There are sites that list the shops that offer free hotspots. Most of the coffee shops around university campuses have free wifi.

 

Interesting takes on the future of the paid service. Seems reasonable that it would move to a less secure open service for free then a more secure faster paid service.

For those who "don't get it" about why people pay for the service. Many, many of us live places where there is no such thing as "free" wifi. Where I live we even have Muni Wifi (well, in theory but it's not that well received just yet) but out muni is a PAID service at $20/mo with very flaky service in all but the most affluent RESIDENTAL neighborhoods, go figure. Even though it was built with public funds. But then again this is the facist county of Santa Barbara, CA.

But here in our small towns we have no options for wifi beyind paid services such as t-mobile or Boingo/Wayport (McDonalds). We had one restaurant in town offering a free hotspot but they shut it down for "abuse" whatever that means.

So, if I want to get out of the office to work I am forced to pay for a service to keep web access...it's that simple and we are not crazy for doing so...it's the only option.

The offer is actually a sweet deal for some but I dunno if this free period will get me to upgrade as several of the vertical apps I use are not fully tested in Vista and I just got done setting up my new system anyway. I ordered my free upgrade but it's gonna sit on the shelf for a while I suspect.

 

I'd like to know how T-mobile knows you are using Vista. Wouldn't it be nice if the rest of us could take advantage of this limited time opportunity?

Perhaps there is a file that T-mobile scans for on your Vista PC that could be ported to an XP-based PC, if this is how they do it. I don't think its quite that simple but I find the notion intriguingly.

I've been reading of the headaches testers are having trying to uninstall Vista partitions from their XP machines....one more reason to wait till SP1 or SP2.

 

I lived most of my life in santa barbara and goleta. There are literally hundreds of free wifi spots there i know it well.

It is hard to believe that there is a place where there is a tmobile paid hot spot and not a free one very nearby. Even is santa barbara I know where the tmobile spots are in borders kinkos and starbucks and i know few people use them.

Anyhow as I said, tmobile installed wimax routers in all of their hotspot locations. You can pick up the routers if you are near them they are just not online yet. They will be part of the upcoming wimax isp offering,