Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Far-Away Phone Call


In addition to all the usual criteria - room size, comfort, nice bathrooms, quietness, heating/cooling controls etc. - I've now started to judge hotels by the quality and availability of their broadband services. Working in the room is always a given and, thanks largely to the usurious rates hotels charge for their phone calls, Skype has also now become an essential tool, especially if calling from overseas. I mention all this because the hotel I use in Stockholm - Radisson SAS by the train station - recently went from wired to wireless, which is good, but in the process screwed up both access and reliability a treat, which is very bad. I keep getting a duplicate IP address warning; signal strength is very variable depending on where your room is; it times-out overnight meaning you don't wake up with a nice fresh stack of messages ready to go; and they outsource the whole shooting match so are less than helpful if you call down to complain.

Everything else about the place is great, but not enough. This one issue now dominates what I need from a hotel and so I'll have to look elsewhere if this doesn't improve.

2 comments:

bayarearunner said...

i like this one. tilting is a simple effect, but it's powerful in this pic.

J said...

Thanks. I should have zoomed in a bit more though to make the bloke a bit bigger in the frame, and it's bit blurry (mostly because it's dark down there!) You'll now doubt be unsurprised to know it's a) cold here, b) either grey or black, day vs. night and c) sleeting. Therefore, taking shots of even poorly lit station platforms may be more rewarding than anything I've found outside!