Hmm, this feature may have been around for a while and I’m just now noticing it, in which case I feel like an idiot. At any rate, did you know that your Kindle can connect for free to AT&T wireless hotspots without requring any logins, checkboxes or agreement buttons? You have to manually select the hotspot the first time, but after that it will automatically connect whenever you’re in range.
Amazon calls it “free Wi-Fi access” but also says you can use it for Kindle shopping, so I’m not sure whether this means the access is restricted to just the Kindle store. At minimum, I would expect it to also sync notes and bookmarks, but I’ll have to drop in at a Starbucks and test it out.
See Amazon’s help page for details on how to set it up. AT&T has a hotspot locator map if you want to find nearby locations.
(Photo: preetamrai)
By Scott Marlowe February 25, 2011 - 3:32 PM
Not sure if *all* AT&T hot spots are free (if I’m wrong, cool), but at the Starbucks locations it’s been free for maybe 6 months now. Prior to that it was free for the first 2 hours, but they decided to lift that “restriction”. I put ‘restriction’ in double quotes b/c I’d been at Starbucks stores for longer than 2 hours back when there was such a policy and I never got booted.
By Chris Walters February 26, 2011 - 8:43 PM
Okay, I took my Kindle to a Starbucks today and actually tested this out. If you have wireless on, your Kindle will connect to the AT&T hotspot seamlessly, but only for Kindle-related activities. That means the following things work without any effort on your part:
- syncing of notes, bookmarks and highlights
- shopping the Kindle store through your Kindle
- receiving downloads from the Kindle store
For anything else, you’ll be directed to the standard-issue Starbucks/AT&T “click this box and then this button if you want to go online” page. It’s still free, it’s just an extra step.