Saturday, November 26, 2005

Plug

We're about to head home from a two-night stay at the Inn at Morgan Hill, a hotel alongside Highway 101 (Tenant Road exit, northbound side) about 25 miles south of San Jose. Here's one reason I love this hotel:

Another: the broadband is free.

Another: there's no sign-up, no splash page, no weird page re-directs, no promotional BS. Just an ethernet outlet providing a nice fast (for a U.S. hotel) connection. I tested it with my portable wi-fi access point and the results were identical. At the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge, Mass, where I stayed in Boston a few days ago, their "free" Internet service is 56K, forcing serious users to pay $9.95 for broadband — which in my room was provided by both Ethernet and a very weak wi-fi signal. Half the clicks on links through either connection jump to a "loading" page. And the connection speed barely beat dial-up. Imagine being forced to unfurl promotional messages on a roll of toilet paper just to unlock the flush lever in a pay toilet that barely flushed in any case. At that same hotel, when I asked for improvements to the lousy bandwidth I was already paying for, the person behind the counter called over a manager who said, "What are you trying to do, get some email?" Wrong question. Especially at a hotel next door to MIT. Don't these upscale hotels have any idea how much that kind of stupid service pisses off potentially good repeat business?

Other amenities at the Inn at Morgan Hill are pretty good too. Including the price. We paid around $100 for two adults and a kid, tax and freight included. Not bad, considering.