Does your Home Depot and Lowe's have free wifi?

Next time you have your smartphones at Home Depot or Lowe's on that
errand SHE put you on to get the upstairs bedroom painted some color
you'll hate, pop out your wifi smartphones and logon to the free wifi in
both of these places. I'm using Home Depot's nice satellite-based wifi
at night from the Waffle House down the street around the corner and,
dispite them blocking YouTube and the other major streaming sites, it's
really nice free wifi. Up and down speeds are 1.5Mbps T-1 rates off the
satellite, especially after the store closes at night and there's no
loads. The video blocking problem is easy to defeat. Just use a webpage
not related directly to YouTube to access youtube through a popup window
from that webpages seems to defeat the blocking. Use
http://www.streaming-madness.net which uses mostly youtube science videos
through a streaming Flash app. Its IP is not on the block list.

Every day I find lots of new wifi using the high powered Alfa external
USB adapter. I got the 9dbi antenna in for it today and did some
wardriving with the adapter suction cupped to the tailgate window outside
the Smart car with the 9dbi antenna sticking up above it. There was page
after page after page of wifi stations to choose from, all over town!
Lots of home stations had no passwords at all and most still had the
manufacturer's default SSID! They didn't even change the default
"admin" passwords....amazing.

No, I didn't crap on their stupidity, if that's what you're thinking.
Never bite the hand that feeds you FREE INTERNET anywhere in town.

Who needs expensive sellphone data? This place is LOADED if you have the
right high powered adapter stuck to a window!

---

› See More: Does your Home Depot and Lowe's have free wifi?

On Tue, 23 Nov 2010 05:11:21 +0000, in
<[email protected]>, Fred <[email protected]>
wrote:

>Next time you have your smartphones at Home Depot or Lowe's on that
>errand SHE put you on to get the upstairs bedroom painted some color
>you'll hate, pop out your wifi smartphones and logon to the free wifi in
>both of these places. I'm using Home Depot's nice satellite-based wifi
>at night from the Waffle House down the street around the corner and,
>dispite them blocking YouTube and the other major streaming sites, it's
>really nice free wifi. Up and down speeds are 1.5Mbps T-1 rates off the
>satellite, especially after the store closes at night and there's no
>loads. ...

Been there; done that (legitimately when shopping in the store).
Unfortunately, signal coverage in stores I've used has had lots of
weak/dead spots, and service has often been sluggish even when I have a
good connection. I usually get much better performance over 3G
cellular, and since I have an unlimited data package, I often turn Wi-Fi
off when in Home Depot.

--
John

"If the only tool you have is a hammer,
you will see every problem as a nail."
-Abraham Maslow

In article <[email protected]>, Carl
<[email protected]> wrote:

> I am curious as to how one has time to surf the internet when shopping at a
> Home Depot? All I want to do is get out of there ASAP. Do they now have
> little cafe tables and serve you lattes? Has going there now become a family
> outing, instead of, say, taking the kids to the Smithsonian?

people don't go to home depot to surf. they go there to shop and while
there, they use the wifi there to check prices at other stores, do a
little research on what product is best, take a photo and email it to
the other half to evaluate, etc.

Fred wrote:
> Next time you have your smartphones at Home Depot or Lowe's on that
> errand SHE put you on to get the upstairs bedroom painted some color
> you'll hate, pop out your wifi smartphones and logon to the free wifi
> in both of these places. I'm using Home Depot's nice satellite-based
> wifi at night from the Waffle House down the street around the corner
> and, dispite them blocking YouTube and the other major streaming
> sites, it's really nice free wifi. Up and down speeds are 1.5Mbps
> T-1 rates off the satellite, especially after the store closes at
> night and there's no loads. The video blocking problem is easy to
> defeat. Just use a webpage not related directly to YouTube to access
> youtube through a popup window from that webpages seems to defeat the
> blocking. Use http://www.streaming-madness.net which uses mostly
> youtube science videos through a streaming Flash app. Its IP is not
> on the block list.
>
> Every day I find lots of new wifi using the high powered Alfa external
> USB adapter. I got the 9dbi antenna in for it today and did some
> wardriving with the adapter suction cupped to the tailgate window
> outside the Smart car with the 9dbi antenna sticking up above it.
> There was page after page after page of wifi stations to choose from,
> all over town! Lots of home stations had no passwords at all and most
> still had the manufacturer's default SSID! They didn't even change
> the default "admin" passwords....amazing.
>
> No, I didn't crap on their stupidity, if that's what you're thinking.
> Never bite the hand that feeds you FREE INTERNET anywhere in town.
>
> Who needs expensive sellphone data? This place is LOADED if you have
> the right high powered adapter stuck to a window!
>
>
I am curious as to how one has time to surf the internet when shopping at a
Home Depot? All I want to do is get out of there ASAP. Do they now have
little cafe tables and serve you lattes? Has going there now become a family
outing, instead of, say, taking the kids to the Smithsonian?

Personally, I dislike Home Depot and Loews. I go to Ace Hardware which is
more local, smaller and more convenient to get around, faster to get in and
out of, and has 95% of the things I need these days. I'll forgo the free
wifi, thanks.

"Carl" <[email protected]> wrote in news:4cec1ad7$0$7116
[email protected]:

> taking the kids to the Smithsonian?
>

When you get to the Smithsonian, have a little fun with the staff.

Ask them why the big Edison exhibit is lit up and powered by Tesla's
multiphase AC and Tesla's flourescent lights and the heating and cooling
in the exhibit runs off Tesla's induction motors.

The bastards at Smithsonian refused to even accept a bust of Tesla from
some elementary school class the teacher of which is a Tesla fan. Stop
the first guide you find and ask them were the massive Tesla exhibit hall
is located so you can see all the thousands of Tesla inventions that make
our world so electrified, radios, remote controls, etc.

(Don't look, there isn't one. Tesla isn't even mentioned by these
snobbish bastards from academia.)

http://www.ntesla.org/

http://www.ntesla.org/http_www.ntesl...ovide_p.7.html

nospam <[email protected]> wrote in
news:231120101416352007%[email protected]:

> In article <[email protected]>, Carl
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I am curious as to how one has time to surf the internet when
>> shopping at a Home Depot? All I want to do is get out of there ASAP.
>> Do they now have little cafe tables and serve you lattes? Has going
>> there now become a family outing, instead of, say, taking the kids to
>> the Smithsonian?
>
> people don't go to home depot to surf. they go there to shop and while
> there, they use the wifi there to check prices at other stores, do a
> little research on what product is best, take a photo and email it to
> the other half to evaluate, etc.
>

Not here. You can't connect to lowes.com from Home Depot or vice-
versa....(c;]

Best Buy is the worst. They do everything they can to prevent you from
price checking! I pocket my Cricket aircard plugged into my Cradlepoint
pocket router before entering the store. From their own laptop, I
connect to my pocket router and find the very laptop tens of percent
cheaper elsewhere. "How come this laptop is so expensive when buy.com
has it for $380 less money?"

As I trundle away, they're tracing their network back to find out who
screwed up and didn't block buy.com from the servers. The Geek Squad
never seems to catch on by looking to see WHO it's connected to....(c;]

On 23/11/10 2:20 PM, Fred wrote:
> "Carl"<[email protected]> wrote in news:4cec1ad7$0$7116
> [email protected]:
>
>> taking the kids to the Smithsonian?

> (Don't look, there isn't one. Tesla isn't even mentioned by these
> snobbish bastards from academia.)

False:

http://www.teslasociety.com/dctrip.htm

jc

In message <[email protected]> Fred
<[email protected]> was claimed to have wrote:

>As I trundle away, they're tracing their network back to find out who
>screwed up and didn't block buy.com from the servers. The Geek Squad
>never seems to catch on by looking to see WHO it's connected to....(c;]

Well that, plus they only have a few seconds to figure it out since once
your access point goes out of range, the laptop jumps to their own wifi.

nospam wrote:
> In article <[email protected]>, Carl
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> I am curious as to how one has time to surf the internet when
>> shopping at a Home Depot? All I want to do is get out of there
>> ASAP. Do they now have little cafe tables and serve you lattes? Has
>> going there now become a family outing, instead of, say, taking the
>> kids to the Smithsonian?
>
> people don't go to home depot to surf. they go there to shop and while
> there, they use the wifi there to check prices at other stores,
>
:-) I'm sure that's exactly what Home Depot had in mind when installing its
wifi system for its shoppers- price comparison with other stores- great
business success model indeed: the store pays so that you can find a better
price elsewhere. I like it...
>
>do a little research on what product is best,
>
Yes, that's what they used to hire trained employees for- the ones you can
no longer find in the aisles of a Home Depot- and the ones now adding to
that 10% unemployment figure...
>
>take a photo and email it to the other half to evaluate, etc.
>
Ok, I like this one.

I get your ideas. Just a-foolin' around with ya. Thanks.

In message <[email protected]> "Carl"
<[email protected]> was claimed to have wrote:

>nospam wrote:
>> In article <[email protected]>, Carl
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> I am curious as to how one has time to surf the internet when
>>> shopping at a Home Depot? All I want to do is get out of there
>>> ASAP. Do they now have little cafe tables and serve you lattes? Has
>>> going there now become a family outing, instead of, say, taking the
>>> kids to the Smithsonian?
>>
>> people don't go to home depot to surf. they go there to shop and while
>> there, they use the wifi there to check prices at other stores,
>>
>:-) I'm sure that's exactly what Home Depot had in mind when installing its
>wifi system for its shoppers- price comparison with other stores- great
>business success model indeed: the store pays so that you can find a better
>price elsewhere. I like it...

If you believe your store has the lowest price already, you don't need
to worry that customers have one more way to verify this fact.

More importantly, you can look up specs, compare models and buy on the
spot rather than going home to compare specs, then deciding to just buy
from Amazon instead of driving back to the store.

DevilsPGD <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> If you believe your store has the lowest price already, you don't need
> to worry that customers have one more way to verify this fact.
>

Precisely why Best Buy tries everything it can do to prevent you from
comparing online prices. They KNOW their prices are all way inflated.....
(c;]

On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 21:35:05 +0000
Fred <[email protected]> wrote:

> DevilsPGD <[email protected]> wrote in
> news:[email protected]:
>
> > If you believe your store has the lowest price already, you don't need
> > to worry that customers have one more way to verify this fact.
> >
>
> Precisely why Best Buy tries everything it can do to prevent you from
> comparing online prices. They KNOW their prices are all way inflated.....
> (c;]
>

If I wanted to price-shop, I wouldn't be at Best Buy in the first place.

There are any number of places I could go to get the exact same merchandise for less money.

I get the convenience of being able to walk out of the store with my purchase. Best Buy's management knows that. Plus, Best Buy has a lot more overhead than, say, Amazon. Amazon doesn't even maintain a significant inventory. It costs money for Best Buy to purchase the inventory, and every year, they have to pay taxes on it. (Inventory is a taxable business asset.) Plus, they have all of the other expenses associated with a brick-and-mortar retail store. Amazon doesn't have most of those expenses.

But the big reason for me to buy at BB is convenience. That's why I'm sometimes willing to pay $1.59 at Circle K, for the same package of Ho-Ho's that Food4Less sells for $1.00. I don't have to wait in a long line at Circle K.

(Yes, I do keep track of the price of Hostess snack cakes; laugh at me if you want to!)

--
Steve Sobol <[email protected]>

On 28/11/10 1:49 PM, Steve Sobol wrote:

> (Yes, I do keep track of the price of Hostess snack cakes; laugh at me if you want to!)

Ho Ho! :-)

jc

DevilsPGD wrote:
> In message <[email protected]> "Carl"
> <[email protected]> was claimed to have wrote:
>
>> nospam wrote:
>>> In article <[email protected]>, Carl
>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I am curious as to how one has time to surf the internet when
>>>> shopping at a Home Depot? All I want to do is get out of there
>>>> ASAP. Do they now have little cafe tables and serve you lattes? Has
>>>> going there now become a family outing, instead of, say, taking the
>>>> kids to the Smithsonian?
>>>
>>> people don't go to home depot to surf. they go there to shop and
>>> while there, they use the wifi there to check prices at other
>>> stores,
>>>
>> :-) I'm sure that's exactly what Home Depot had in mind when
>> installing its wifi system for its shoppers- price comparison with
>> other stores- great business success model indeed: the store pays so
>> that you can find a better price elsewhere. I like it...
>
> If you believe your store has the lowest price already, you don't need
> to worry that customers have one more way to verify this fact.
>
> More importantly, you can look up specs, compare models and buy on the
> spot rather than going home to compare specs, then deciding to just
> buy from Amazon instead of driving back to the store.
>
To the best of my ability, I just START with Amazon. No need to leave the
house. Home Depot is not going to beat them. And I save the gas. So stay
home with me and we'll have a hot chocolate... :-)

Steve Sobol wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Nov 2010 21:35:05 +0000
> Fred <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> DevilsPGD <[email protected]> wrote in
>> news:[email protected]:
>>
>>> If you believe your store has the lowest price already, you don't
>>> need to worry that customers have one more way to verify this fact.
>>>
>>
>> Precisely why Best Buy tries everything it can do to prevent you from
>> comparing online prices. They KNOW their prices are all way
>> inflated..... (c;]
>>
>
> If I wanted to price-shop, I wouldn't be at Best Buy in the first
> place.
>
> There are any number of places I could go to get the exact same
> merchandise for less money.
>
> I get the convenience of being able to walk out of the store with my
> purchase. Best Buy's management knows that. Plus, Best Buy has a lot
> more overhead than, say, Amazon. Amazon doesn't even maintain a
> significant inventory.
>
>
It's not that I know for a fact, but my experience has implied to me that
this is incorrect. I get things from Amazon sometimes within one day.
Apparently, they actually have storage warehouses around the country which
enable them to ship things inexpensively, and because the warehouses are
closeby, they arrive to you quickly.

We were talking about this the other day. I believe Amazon may very well be
the best business model anywhere. Where else can you buy anything from books
to guitars, at the lowest prices, and get free delivery and get it quickly?
I think it's an amazing organization.