Be wary of believing McDonalds' "free wi-fi" promotion. In my area it's free the first few times; but the fine print says it's a 30-day free trial for AT&T wi-fi. If you don't have - or get - an AT&T wi-fi account, it stops working 30 days after the first time you use it. Even another different kind of AT&T ISP account won't work, so far as we could learn, after the free trial period. (They may have a different arrangement elsewhere, but that's how it works here.)

IHOP has a similar pitch, with even less transparent fine print in the "acceptance of terms." IHOP has the advantage of being open 24/7 while at McDonalds only the "drive through window" is open late at night; but here IHOP actually is a "piggy back" connection on the McDonald's one, and it works only as long as a McDonalds nearby leaves the server running when the store closes - and until the 30-day free trial runs out and/or you sign up for some way to pay for AT&T wi-fi.

There are ways of buying "time cards" to use AT&T wi-fi after the trial period runs out, but they're complex (as explained to us) and relatively expensive.

Thus far, Barnes & Noble is about the only place we've found a "forever free" wi-fi connection. It works only if you have some sort of ISP account with "somebody." The difference is that they have a list of almost every "somebody" you're likely to have an account with and you just click on the one you want, so they continue to work every time and everywhere, and apparently for as long as you want to keep stopping in and have an email account (almost) anywhere.

John