Thanks to my friend Sam for the heads up on this. It’s always nice to have a friend that works on the inside. A few days ago, she mentioned to me that some of the Toronto Public Library branches will have WiFi Internet access. She told me that her branch would be one of them.
A few days later I was searching online for some place to just sit and do some writing. Then I remembered what Sam had told me about the TPL offering up WiFi, so I searched Google to find out if a listing of branch locations had been put together. Sure enough the TPL website had a listing of the branches that were offering WiFi access.
As of late, I had been hanging out at coffee shops (preferably ones that had free Internet WiFi in case I wanted to quickly jump on to check email or search for something to reference). I’ve found a couple of coffee places that do offer up some free Wifi more notably, Linux Caffe (which I have yet to visit), Urbana Coffee (which I think just very recently started charging for its WiFi), and William’s Coffee Pub (located by the Harbourfront). While these coffee houses offer up some good atmosphere and some good grub, I guess sometimes it’s just nice to be able to just sit somewhere undisturbed by the cacophony of conversations and just write.
Now I guess I have another option if I want to go somewhere relatively quiet to just write stuff up on my laptop because there are quite a few branches of the TPL that are now offering WiFi. If you’re interested in checking out which locations have Wifi be sure to visit the Toronto Public Library Services page to see if there are any branches close to where you are. I don’t have any idea as of yet, how fast the connections speeds are or anything of that nature, but if/when I do have the chance to try it out I’ll be sure to post something about it.
CORRECTION (August 10, 2008): It turns out that I was incorrect about Urbana charging for their WiFi. It is still free (YAY!). But apparently they have introduced what they call Internet Pay Stations. Essentially they offer a couple of extra computers hidden away in the corner that are pay per use.
Great post. For those of you who is Linux and want to use the toronto library wireless, it may not work since they use NT servers that need WINS installed on your system. Here is a cool tutorial on how to get it working: http://torontogeek.com/blog/2010/06/how-to-use-wirelesswifi-at-toronto-public-library-with-linux-debian_ubuntu/
Hi Tony,
Thanks for that information about accessing the Toronto Public Library WiFi connection using Linux.
I personally use Linux but have not had issues with connecting to the TPL WiFi, apart from having to call into the Spyders Help Line if I visit a different library.
Thanks again for stopping by my site!
-boywithnoname
Thanks for the heads up Dara. I think I might know where I may be spending some of my hours to write & eat :D
Thanks for posting this BWNN! It is worth mentioning that TPL has recently implemented a food friendly policy, so bring your laptop or wireless device *and* a latte to one of the 30+ branches that have free wi-fi.